By IANS,
Jammu : Recently-elected panchayat members of a Jammu and Kashmir village resigned Tuesday fearing an attack by the wildlife mafia, the sarpanch said.
The village, Poishana, is located in the Surankote area on the edge of the Mughal Road that connects Poonch district with the Kashmir Valley. All the panchayat members submitted their resignations to the tehsildhar, top administrative official of the area.
Villagers and panchayat members said they had resisted the efforts of wildlife smugglers to sell the skins of rare species of animals like the Markhor and Roosa, following which the mafia asked the villagers to “vacate the forest area”.
“This was too much to bear, so we decided to lodge the complaint against them with police,” sarpanch Shafiq Mir told IANS on phone Tuesday.
Police have registered a case.
Sonaullah Zargar, a forest activist, was killed in Budgam district of the Kashmir Valley last month.