The Hyderabad Police arrested four persons for hunting two black bucks, killing one and selling its meat. Forest Department officials also rescued the second blackbuck from the captivity of the poachers.
The South Zone Task team along with Forest Department officials nabbed Chavan Shanker Baba and Mohammad Zubair for the offence of hunting wild animals and selling its meat. The third accused in the case Mohammab Salmanuddin and the fourth accused, Imran, are buyers.
The prime accused in the case, Chavan Shanker Baba, is a farmer by profession and a native of Chata village in Kubeer Mandal of Nirmal District. Police say he began hunting deer to make a living as his agricultural income dropped.
Police say Mohammad Zubair, a resident of Nizamabad is accused of mediating the sale and purchasing deer meat as well as live deer. Salmanuddin reached out to Zubair to help arrange deer meat for his friend Imran.
Zubair had contacted Chavan, who had hunted two deer, killed one of the black bucks, and kept the other one alive in his possession. Salmanuddin was alerted about the availability of deer who then booked a rental car from Hyderabad to reach Nizamabad for the deer meat. He purchased live deer for an amount of Rs 15,000 from Zubair. The duo then met with Chavan and collected the live deer for Rs 7,000 and also collected the butchered meat from the other one. They then sold the meat to Imran, a native of Bhodan.
On preliminary enquiry, police found Chavan and Zubair to have allegedly committed the same offence more than 10 times.
The South Zone Task Force took action based on a tip-off.
Police officials along with Forest Department officials apprehended all four accused and recovered the one live deer and meat of the other.
Police have booked the four men under Section 51 (any person who contravenes any provisions of Chapter 5A shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term of seven years and a fine) of the Wild Life Protection Act 1972.
Black buck was earlier placed in the Near Threatened category of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red Data Book but has now placed the species in the Least Concern category. Black buck is also known as Krishna Jinka locally, and was declared as the state animal of Andhra Pradesh in 2018 by the then TDP government.