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The Dead Hiran: Story of an Inquest

@Suhas Kumar

April 2001, 5.30 PM, I closed my briefcase and got ready to leave myoffice for home, and then the intercom buzzed. The chief wildlifewarden of Madhya Pradesh, my boss, was on the other side. Hearing

from him at this time was a clear indication that some urgent worklurked for me; he spoke Suhas, the principal secretary wants you togo to Gwalior tonight and investigate into the death of a 'hiran' thatwas found dead some 15 days back inside the open foundation of abuilding under construction.

The principal secretary, Mr. C.S Chadda was one of those rare officersgenuinely concerned for wildlife and so he had issued a circular to allfield officers to report to him all cases of death of wild animals; even ifthe case involved a hare it must be reported to him by fax.

Soon, I was aboard a train to Gwalior. I reached late and, after leavinginstructions for the divisional forest officer to report to me at seven,next morning, headed straight to bed.

I got up early when it was still dark and decided to go for a walk. As Isauntered on the street to the railway station, plans for the day'saction began to form in my head.

For my investigation, I was given nothing except a copy of preliminaryoffence report (PoR) that was hardly a report, so to say, for it was aprinted form only a quarter of a normal sheet of paper. The details thatI would need to commence my investigation were nowhere to befound. The PoR that I had didn't say much except that the staff hadrecovered a dead animal from the foundation of a house underconstruction at an upcoming colony in the outskirts of Gwalior townand that the dead animal was a 'Hiran'. Now, Hiran is a generic nameloosely applied to both deer and antelope, and as the staff hadconsigned it to flames soon after the postmortem (the PM report, too,referred to the animal as Hiran which died a natural death) there wasno way to identify the animal. So, till then, I didn't even know whichanimal species was found dead some 15 days back and that now was

the object of my inquest. I still hoped that the forest staff wasintelligent enough and had taken photographs before burning the deadanimal or the residents of that colony would throw some light on itsidentity. I also needed a map of the township showing the location ofthis colony in relation to the scrub forests of Gwalior, for if a wildanimal had come into town it must have come from a jungle unless itwas illegally kept by someone in captivity.

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After getting back to the rest house, I rang up the divisional forestofficer Mr. Arun Kumar and requested him bring with him a map whichshowed the location of the burgeoning colony as well as the forest areaof his division. Arun arrived at the appointed time along with his Sub-divisional office and the range officer. The map showed that the colonywas developing at the north eastern outskirts of the town and areserved forest patch of Gwalior division was only about a kilometer

away from the colony.

Our team reached the spot around 8 A.M. The excavated foundation was about 4'deep and in this trench some local residenthad first seen the dead hiran early in themorning but had called the forestdepartment in the late afternoon ,afterweighing pros and cons.

The range officer gave an account of his

work along with his staff he had arrivedimmediately and retrieved the body, asked

a few questions from the person who hadcalled, as the body was stinking he got it

stuffed into a gunny bag and sent it to the local governmentveterinarian for postmortem. And after that was over he took thecarcass to a spot at the local nursery - where the dead wild animals areburned and in the late evening the carcass was consigned to flames inthe presence of the divisional forest officer (there is an standinginstructions from the chief wildlife warden to burn all dead animals toprevent misuse of their flesh and body parts).

When I reached the scene of incident, I saw some local men andwomen, who were loitering outside till we arrived, retreat into theirhouses and close the doors. Obviously, their previous encounter withthe forest staff had been rough. I walked to the nearest house andrang the bell a lady came out but refused to talk maintaining that shehad no knowledge about the dead animal. The person who hadreported about it was out of town. So, here again I drew a blank andthe staff offered no clue either. I asked if they had by any chancephotographed it the range officers face lit up and he drew a postcardphotograph from his shirt pocket. The photograph was taken in the

evening without a flash and not of the body of the dead animal but ofthe gunny bag in which it was stuffed only a tiny part of its head andsnout was visible and which to my chagrin did nothing to divulge theidentity of the species. I asked him to get this photograph enlarged asbig as the studio could make without losing details and to meet me atthe rest house as soon as he could.

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Next morning at seven we all were at the Nursery ready to do ourforensic work. We mixed the remains of the body parts and ashesthoroughly mixed with ample amount of water and then strained thismixture. We were actually looking for metal in the ashes, we didnt findany. It was now safe to conclude that the animal didnt die frombuckshot or bullet.

Starting with no clue to go about my investigation initially, in one anda half day I was able to conclusively identify the species, find out itshome near the scene of its death and establish that no firearm wasinstrumental in its death. Now, there were two possible scenarios -either the chowsingha strayed into human habitation and- chased bystreet dogs- fell into the excavation and died of shock or after enteringthe colony a local resident captured the chowsingha and thereafter itdied of post-capture trauma and then the captor, to save his own skin,dumped it. Had the dogs chased the chowsingha they would havefound and mauled it but - as no injury was visible on the body whenthe dead animal was retrieved by the staff - this couldn't have been

the case.

Now, ready with conclusions I returned to Bhopal to file my report. Thereport of course mentioned the dire straits in which I found our fieldpersonnel, who had no knowledge of wild animals under their charge,and lacked skills for collection of evidence and of investigating anoffence, and owing to this shortcoming they were profoundlyirresponsible towards their duty. I emphasized the need for organizingregular skill oriented training courses to all territorial officers and staff. Though I mentioned the callousness of the veterinarian, I couldn'tblame him entirely for he had no training in wild animal forensic and

because this was not his primary job. During last 20 years I have beencrusading for creating wildlife health and forensic facility in the stateand hopefully this dream would be realized soon.

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