15th Feb., 2019

In the past 17 years, Kerala has registered 630 wildlife offences and of them only 20 have seen convictions, according to report by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.

The auditors found this by collating data from 10 wildlife divisions in the state since 2000. “Some of the reasons for the low rate of convictions were inability of the investigating officers to gather and produce proper and sufficient evidences to establish the crime, failure in producing the articles seized at the crime spot, and procedural lapses,” says the report.

According to the forest code, when a forest official below the rank of range officer (RO) detects a forest offence, he should submit a detailed report to the RO within 24 hours. Then, the RO has to conduct an enquiry and submit a report to the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO). 

Of the 630 offences registered, 71 saw acquittals, 144 were either dropped or compounded and 395 are pending (230 in court and 165 at divisional level).

The audit also found that the Wayanad wildlife division booked 26 cases under the Kerala Forest Act, instead of the Wildlife Protection Act, thereby reducing the gravity of these offences.

To this, the Kerala government said regular refresher courses were being conducted by the state forest institutes regarding wildlife crime investigation and the trend was changing.

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