Eight poachers held from the Amboli forest range

Kolhapur: The Amboli forest range office under Kolhapur circle arrested eight poachers and seized wildlife and hunting equipment at Choukul and Shirgaonkar Point in the Amboli Forest Range.Assistant conservator of forests Vaibhav Borate said, “While our patrolling team of the Amboli forest department was on a routine patrol on Thursday, a man was was found carrying a dead porcupine. Our team arrested the accused and also seized a gun, a dead porcupine, a head torch, and other hunting equipment.”The man was identified as Vithu Waghu Kokre, a resident of Choukul village in Sindhudurg district.While the patrolling team was returning to Amboli, they inspected a few youths Shirgaonkar Point.

The team found a cartridge gun, seven live cartridges, 10 used cartridges, two torches, a sword, a dead mouse deer, and an Indian civet with the youths. The team arrested seven people , including six from Kolhapur and one local. However, two of their accomplices managed to flee the spot.The arrested were identified as Pawan Prakash Desai from Kadgaon village, Javed Salim Jamadar from Yadvnagar village, Hasim Hussain Kaji from Tirwade Kadgaon village, Bharat Navlu Patil from Choukul village in Sindhudurg district, Vanu Phonde from Yerandpe village, Ganesh Patkar from Pimpri Chinchwad area and Akash Mohan Kurane from Yadavnagar village were arrested.

The court has remanded all these suspects in forest custody till June 20.The operation was carried out under the guidance of deputy conservator of forests Milish Sharma and assistant conservator of forests Vaibhav Borate, and was executed by range forest officer Vaibhav Bhise, and forest personnels Namdev Chougule, Mehbub Nayakwade, Samrat Patil, Gorish Rane, Ravindra Patil, Sangram Patil, Tanaji Chavan, Vasudev Khot, Aniket Aware, and Aniket Deshmukh.