The shooting of three alleged poachers by Karnataka Forest Department personnel in Chamarajanagar on August 15 has since escalated into a larger conflict involving allegations of a fake encounter, attacks on forest infrastructure and protests in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The three men, Anthony Swamy, John Rose Peter and Kumar Sawariyappan, were shot dead in the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in the early hours of August 15.
A fourth man, Joseph Mahima Das, who was allegedly with them, survived and later released a video disputing the Forest Department’s account of the incident.
The Forest Department maintains that the men were suspected poachers who opened fire at personnel during an anti-poaching operation and that the officers responded in self-defence. The families of the deceased, however, say the men had gone into the forest looking for missing cattle and were not poaching.
The controversy has also taken on an interstate dimension because the three men were Tamil-speaking residents of villages in Karnataka.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay has condemned the killings and sought a probe, while Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar has rejected demands for a CBI investigation and said Tamil Nadu should not interfere in Karnataka’s affairs.
Days after the shooting, several anti-poaching camps in the Cauvery and adjoining Male Mahadeshwara wildlife sanctuaries were allegedly vandalised or blown up with explosives. A forest fire also damaged around 10 acres in the Shilubepura area.
So, what exactly happened and why has this become a Karnataka-Tamil Nadu flashpoint?
What happened on August 15?
According to the Forest Department, they received information around 8 pm on August 14 that a group of men had entered the sanctuary to hunt. Two teams of forest staff, comprising 10 to 15 personnel in total, were formed and sent into the Hanur forest range to track them down.
Patrol staff at the Ganigamangala watch tower reportedly spotted people moving through the forest with torchlights, and the group was tracked through the night to a rocky outcrop known as Karadikalu, an area with mobile network coverage where the men are believed to have rested. When forest personnel approached the spot around 5 am, officials say one of the men opened fire on them, prompting a forest guard to fire back with a slide-action shotgun.
Three men, Antony Swamy, John Rose Peter and Kumar Sawariyappan, all residents of villages in Hanur taluk, died from their injuries. A fourth man, Joseph Mahima Das, fled the spot and was later found admitted to a private hospital in Mysuru. The Forest Department says it recovered two country-made firearms and roughly 20 to 34 kg of deer meat from the site.
What do the victims' families say?
The account given by the victims' families is entirely different. In a police complaint, Antony Swamy's wife, Lourde Mary, said two of the family's cattle had gone missing on the evening of August 14, and that Antony had set out around 6.30 pm along with three others to look for them. She said the group had stopped to rest on rocks inside the forest, roughly 4 km from their village, when forest personnel arrived and opened fire without any warning.
Local residents who gathered to protest after the killings argued that the location of the wounds, in the neck, chest and ribs, was inconsistent with the Forest Department's claim of defensive firing, and alleged that the men were unarmed.
This scepticism has also been echoed by opposition leaders within Karnataka, including Leader of the Opposition R Ashok, who questioned why the men were fired upon at close range rather than being warned or aimed at below the waist, a norm that officials in similar operations are expected to follow.
Karnataka-Tamil Nadu row?
The three men killed were Tamil-speaking Christians, descendants of migrants who settled in villages around the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary after the Mettur dam displaced their original villages roughly a century ago. Their deaths were quickly framed in Tamil Nadu as the killing of Tamils by another state's police force.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay condemned the killings as a "massacre" and called Karnataka's explanation unacceptable, demanding a high-level investigation. His statement was followed by similar condemnations from DMK president MK Stalin, AIADMK's Edappadi K Palaniswami, and PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss, several of whom sought a CBI inquiry into the deaths.
The issue reached the floor of the Tamil Nadu Assembly on August 18, where a call attention motion was moved demanding a judicial or CBI probe.
Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar has resisted these demands, framing them as one state interfering in another's administration. While he ordered a magisterial inquiry into the shootout within a day of the incident, he has rejected calls for a CBI probe, arguing that Karnataka and Tamil Nadu should each handle their own affairs without interference.
The surviving man’s video
The controversy intensified after Joseph Mahima Das, the fourth man who was allegedly present during the incident, released a video from an undisclosed location.
After being treated at a hospital in Mysuru, where he was visited by a state minister, he reportedly left the hospital and went missing for several days. On August 18, he resurfaced in a video statement filmed from an undisclosed location.
Joseph broadly corroborated the sequence of events described by his companions' families.
He disputed the Forest Department’s version and said the firing began suddenly at around 5.30 am. He alleged he fled because he was afraid. He also alleged that Forest Department personnel were looking for him to make him a witness in the case. Joseph sought protection from the police.
His family has said they have not seen him since he left the hospital. While the Forest Department has listed him as absconding, police have said he is not in their custody.
What has followed the shootout?
In the days after the killings, several Anti-Poaching Camps inside the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary were reportedly damaged using gelatine sticks and dynamite, with forest officials suspecting the attacks were carried out in revenge.
A departmental jeep on night patrol was also allegedly attacked, and a forest fire that damaged around 10 acres near Shilubepura was suspected to have been started deliberately.
Meanwhile, Karnataka has announced Rs 5 lakh in interim relief per family, in addition to Rs 10 lakh offered personally by the local MLA. Tamil Nadu has separately announced Rs 10 lakh per family from its own funds.
The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission has taken up a suo moto investigation and is examining whether the firing was proportionate and lawful. Its findings are expected by early September.
The Hanur forest belt, where the shootout took place, has a long history of poaching and violent confrontations between forest personnel and local hunters. It was once the stronghold of the sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, who evaded capture for over three decades before being killed by the Tamil Nadu Police Special Task Force in 2004.
Since then, smaller poaching networks have persisted in villages along the forest fringes, and court records reportedly show over 300 cases registered under the Wildlife Protection Act in the region over the past decade.
This is also not the first fatal encounter of its kind in the area. In February 2023, a man was killed in a similar exchange of fire with forest officials in the same sanctuary, an incident that also drew condemnation from Tamil Nadu's government at the time.