Palanpur: A joint team of forest department, police and wildlife experts is carrying out an operation to track and cage a sloth bear in a wildlife sanctuary in Banaskantha district of North Gujarat bordering Rajasthan which has so far killed 3 persons including a forest department employee and injured 5 in last four days.

Permission has been obtained from Chief Wildlife Warden to cage the bear. Based on this permission, district police chief had been requested to provide two sharp shooters and commandos. Three teams of forest department are formed. 150 employees of forest department, commandos are deployed to Danta forest. As many as seven tear gas shells were lobbed in caves found in the forest. An expert team has been called from Delhi too for the task.

A forest official involved in the rescue operation today said that a team of experts from Gandhinagar has also joined the operation. ‘They have brought high quality tranquilizing guns with them which can faint the beast for some time for its safe caging,’ the official said adding that the location of the beast has not yet been tracked.

The bear, presumably a female (not officially confirmed as yet), attacked and killed a villager from Khapra, Bhikhabhai Bhagora (35) who had gone to graze his goats in the nearby jungles in Kansa on March 12. On the next day ie March 13 it killed another person Manabhai Angari (26) of the same village and injured two others while they were looking out for missing Bhikhabhai. Yesterday the bear attacked and killed forester R H Patni (56) and injured three other forest department employees during its search operation. The incident took place around Kansa and adjoining areas under Danta Taluka in the Balaram Ambaji Wildlife Sanctuary, which is a home to over 100 such bears. The forest is spread in over 500 square km. The places of occurrence were situated inside the sanctuary in which many tribal villages are located.

The official said that it is not yet clear whether the bear is male of female but it is more likely to be a female. ‘Such deadly attacks can be carried out by a female who might have lost its cubs. Base on this assumption it is presumed that the attacker beast might be female, however it is not yet confirmed,’ he said.

He also said that the forest department was looking to catch the bear alive with the help of tranquilizers and cages.

DeshGujarat