Bengal youth posts pics of himself skinning civet, gets arrested

While the police were able to arrest one youth, the other one managed to flee

By: Anumeha Saxena |
November 22, 2017 11:29 am

A college student in Palta posted photographs on Facebook of him and his friend holding a dead civet (known as bhaam in Bengali) and boasted of preparing it for dinner. Special Operation Group (SOG) CID, Forest Department and Titagarh Police were quick to take action and arrested one of the two students in the raid yesterday, November 21, while the other one managed to flee. Wildlife conservationist and General Secretary of Society for Heritage & Ecological Researches (SHER), Joydip Kundu, posted a tweet and shared the news.

1 of the 2 culprits arrested by #WestBengal #ForestDepartment, SOG CID & TitagarhPS for killng & eating #civet at #Palta area.. commendable action pic.twitter.com/uuli4EO4gk

— SHER (@sherspeak) November 21, 2017

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InUth spoke to Joydip Kundu and asked him about the incident. Joydip said,

Two students from P N Das College in Palta had posted disturbing photographs after hunting a civet on social media. They even posted photographs of them having civet meat for dinner. Thanks to the quick joint action of SOG CID, Forest Department and Titagarh Police, a raid was conducted yesterday but one of the two students managed to escape. An arrest warrant has been issued against the other one and he’ll soon be arrested.

According to the Telegraph report, the police arrested Pronoy Baul from Nonachandrapukur in Palta around 5 PM.

Biswajit Biswas, the other student, has since deleted the post from his Facebook page. A concerned individual took a screenshot of the now-deleted Facebook post and shared it with the West Bengal Forest Department.

Joydip added,

Civet hunting is not a common thing in this region and this is a one-off such incident. The boys will be tried under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972.

Civet or Large Indian Civet is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list, listed as ‘Least Concern’ among endangered species.

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