Now Reading: Forest officer dies chasing poachers in Telangana, three booked
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Forest officer dies chasing poachers in Telangana, three booked
Forest beat officer Banoth Naveen, 37, was electrocuted on Tuesday night while chasing suspected poachers in the Krishnasagar reserve forest in Bhadradri Kothagudem district. He ran into an illegal live electric wire…
The Story in Brief
Forest beat officer Banoth Naveen, 37, was electrocuted on Tuesday night while chasing suspected poachers in the Krishnasagar reserve forest in Bhadradri Kothagudem district. He ran into an illegal live electric wire that sources say was laid to trap wild animals. Police have booked three men from Laxmipuram village, Avula Nagi Reddy, Dasari Naresh and Thati Veerababu, on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Naveen died after his team responded to a tip-off about the wire. While trying to apprehend fleeing suspects, he touched a concealed, knee-high live wire in a plantation. Colleagues carried him to an ambulance, but he was declared dead at the Bhadrachalam area hospital. The Times of India reports the wire had been tapped from a transformer on private land. Forest Minister Konda Surekha has ordered a probe and directed officials to provide ex gratia and employment to Naveen's family.
The Indian Opinion
The usual outrage will skip over a hard truth: poachers have found a cheap, deadly tool in illegal power connections that fringe every forest. Neither the forest department nor the electricity board has a system to detect these lines before they kill. The DFO admits wardens lack detection equipment and that case records on habitual offenders vanish when staff transfer. Telangana must digitise those records, install a joint patrol protocol with the power utility, and start fixing accountability on land occupants when traps appear on their title areas. A digitised offender list is the one concrete test of whether this death changes anything.
Sources (3): timesofindia.indiatimes.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com (2), telanganatoday.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the 3 sources linked above.
Updated: this story now draws on 3 sources.
