Four people, including a father and son, have been sent to jail on court orders for poaching deer in Bandarban. Md Saiful Islam, Sadar range officer of the Bandarban forest division, confirmed this on the evening of Tuesday 31 March.

Those sent to jail are Dil Mohammad (44), a resident of Suwalok union in Bandarban Sadar upazila, and his son Abu Taher (18); Mohammad Zobayer (27), son of the late Nurul Islam; and Saiful Islam (18), son of Abdus Salam.

According to local sources, forest has grown up on the hills of the Bangladesh Military Training Area (BMTA) because nobody lives there, and deer have made it their range. A poaching ring of 15 to 20 people has long been setting hidden net traps to catch deer in the deer grounds that have grown up there, including Chalighat hill, and in other forests in the district.

Acting on this information, the forest department and police carried out a joint operation in the Suwalok area. Searches of the homes of two poaching families turned up cooked deer meat. Four members of the two families were detained and produced in court, which ordered them to be sent to jail.

Range officer Md Saiful Islam said they had known about the ring's deer poaching for some time, but no one could be caught for lack of evidence. Last night, however, the four were detained with evidence, and a case was then filed against them under the wildlife conservation act.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.