A group of hunters had trapped several thousand native and foreign birds that had taken shelter in search of food on a char of the Padma in Sreenagar, Munshiganj. Their aim was to put the birds in cages and sell them. But on discovering this, a local Jubo League leader named Saikat Khan set the captive birds free, and in the end the birds were saved.

The incident took place at noon on Monday (May 24) on a landless char of the Padma river in Rarikhal union of the upazila. Saikat Khan is a former general secretary of the Rarikhal union Jubo League.

He told Jago News: "That afternoon I went to the river beside the village with some younger boys from the area for a bath and a boat trip. We heard the cries of many birds on the landless char that has risen in the middle of the river. Curious, we landed on the char and three men ran away. Suspecting something, we searched and found thousands of birds of many native and foreign kinds trapped under a mosquito net in a straw hut."

"There were munias and various other kinds of birds there," the Jubo League leader said. "We immediately lifted the net and freed the birds into the sky. We all felt good seeing them fly away."

Saikat said countless birds come every year to the paddy fields on the char in search of food, and the hunters had taken the chance to trap them. The birds were small. "We also found some cages in the straw hut. Perhaps the hunters caught them here and sold them in Dhaka. Whoever did this is inhumane and has broken the law of the state. Even if there were 1,000 pairs of birds, at Tk 300 each that would be Tk 3 lakh. The hunters may have caught these wild birds for an illegal income."

Shah Alam Nitul, organising secretary of the Sreenagar Press Club, said: "I have heard about the incident. They did a very good thing by releasing the birds. As many birds come to the char every year, the administration and authorities should stop bird hunting there and take action against the hunters."

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