Gujarat : Forest tracker dies after tranquiliser shot during lioness rescue

Junagadh | Gujarat — In a first-of-it-kind incident, a 30-year-old forest department tracker Ashram Dadubhai Chauhan succumbed in the hospital after he was hit by the high dose tranquiliser injection fired by the forest team on the man-eater lioness at Nani Monpari village of Visavadar taluka in Junagadh. 

A four-year-old boy was mauled to death by a lioness in Nani Monpari village of Visavadar taluka of Junagadh district on January 1. Following the incident, a forest department team launched a rescue operation to cage the lioness. A team with tranquilizer guns from the forest department also reached the spot.

When the forest department staff was setting up a cage at the farm field of green peas in the village, a lioness was spotted and the tranquiliser team opened fire. However, instead of injecting the lioness, the forest department tracker Ashraf Alarrakhan, who was present at the spot, was injured and was shifted to Junagadh Civil Hospital for treatment.

The forest worker who was injected with the poison used to render the giant animal unconscious, died within a few hours during treatment. This incident in Junagadh district is perhaps the first in history in which a forest guard has died due to a missed fire from a tranquilizer gun.

Forest department sources said that a lioness attacked and killed a 4-year-old child of a family working as a laborer on the outskirts of Nani Monpari village on January 1. After this incident, a special rescue team was called from Sasan to catch the man-eating lioness. In the evening, when it was learned that the lioness was in a field, a tranquilizer gun was used by the forest department team to render her unconscious.

According to the Forest Department employee, a lioness was reported hiding in a field that was being ploughed at around 4 pm on Sunday. However,  more than 30 officers and staff of the Forest Department, including a rescue team, reached there. Where the lioness was seen in the field and tracker Ashraf and other employees of the Forest Department were also there. 

“The rescue team had a tranquilizer gun with which it was fired and instead of the lioness, the tranquilizer gun shot hit the left hand of the deceased Ashraf. When the incident happened, all the Forest Department staff rushed to his rescue and he was immediately shifted to the Civil Hospital in Visavadar for first aid and from there he was shifted to the Junagadh Civil Hospital for further treatment” said a forest officer.