Hyderabad: The mystery over a tiger skin missing after it was seized by forest officials in 2016 has been solved with the arrest of two persons on Sunday.
The two accused happen to be the wife of a forest officer and her brother, the police said.
The tiger skin was seized from four locals at Bejjur range in November 2016 when they were trying to sell it. They claimed that they had bought the skin from somebody in Maharashtra. Chief wildlife warden P.K. Jha said, “After the four were arrested and produced in the court, the tiger skin was kept as material evidence in the local forest beat officer’s quarters. However, it went missing six months ago after which we launched an enquiry.”
Laxman Ranjeet Nayak, the DFO of Asifabad, said, “The local forest officer Mr Ravinder had been suspended for negligence, and because of health problems he had to keep travelling to Bellampalli. In his absence, his wife came to the quarters regularly. The forest official had no idea about this. After we heard eyewitnesses’ accounts, we retrieved the skin from the residence of the officer’s wife at Bellampalli. She and her brother had stashed up the skin for future sale.”
