Pilibhit: The field forest force of Pilibhit Tiger Reserve has caught two poachers and seized four canine teeth of a big cat from them. They were booked under Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and sent to jail on Thursday.According to field director of PTR H Rajamohan, the poachers, identified as Data Ram and Jaswant, are residents of Maheshapur village under Bhira police station adjoining Lakhimpur Kheri district.“We had collected definite leads that the duo was in possession of big cat canines through our information sources. Following this, we were attempting to trap them for the past one month,” he said.In order to do so, deputy range officer of Mahof forest range Arif Jamal posing as a customer struck a deal to buy the canines from them for Rs 25,000. He paid the poachers 10% advance as surety after which they were called to Puranpur city area to deliver of the canines and take the full payment. The moment the duo reached Puranpur, they were arrested by the forest force on Wednesday afternoon and the canines were seized from them.As the poachers belong to Kheri district, teams of both PTR and Dudhwa Tiger Reserve are scanning their history of poaching.The field director said the poachers had either killed an adult leopard in Chak beat of Bhira forest range of North Kheri forest division, a buffer zone of DTR, or had found the carcass there about 10 months ago. The poachers claimed that they had found a rotten carcass of a leopard in Kheri forests when they had entered it for collecting firewood. Following this, they had called some of their colleagues to the spot and together they extracted the canines of the leopard. They claimed they could not retrive any other body part as the carcass was rotting, Rajamohan said.“A DTR and PTR team took them to the spot but we could not find any remains of the leopard carcass. Ten months’ time is a long period and during this span, the carcass could have been eaten by vultures, hyenas and jackals,” the field director said.The seized canines are 5 to 7 cm long. Pictures of these were sent to experts at Dehradun’s Wildlife Institute of India (WII). Although there is a strong possibility of these canines are of a full grown leopard, the teeth are being sent for forensic testing to WII to ascertain if they belonged to a leopard or a tiger, he said.As per the information available of forest staff, Data Ram was sent to jail in Kheri district about seven years ago for killing a leopard while Jaswant’s father Gajraj was also involved in poaching. Their records are being traced and verified by the forest staff, said Ramesh Pandey, DTR’s field director.

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