By IANS
Bhopal : Employees of the Van Vihar National Park here locked its gates Saturday and did not allow in visitors to protest against the removal of the park director after the death of a tigress.
Taking a serious note of consecutive tiger deaths including the one Friday evening at the park, State Forest Minister Vijay Shah removed director J.S. Chouhan and instituted a three-member committee to probe into the death of three-year-old white tigress Rashmi.
Brought here in 2006 from Borivali National Park in Mumbai, Rashmi was injured six days ago after she had a brawl with another white tigress when both got into the same enclosure by mistake. Rashmi was also suffering from arthritis for quite some time.
The employees first went to the residence of the forest minister Saturday morning to demand reinstatement of the director but when they were not allowed to meet the minister, they came back and locked the gates of the park in protest.
“How can a park official be held responsible for the death of the tigress when all the treatment arrangements were in place? Also how can any one be held guilty without any inquiry,” asked MP Wildlife Conservation Employees Union president Budhraj Bhagwan who led the employees to the minister’s residence.
“We will continue to serve the animals but not allow the visitors inside the park till our director is reinstated. We may even intensify the agitation if our demand is not met,” he told IANS.
In the last one and a half years, as many as 14 big cats have died at Van Vihar due to various reasons.