India is currently the most dangerous country for forest rangers: Study

Between 2012 and 2017, India accounted for nearly 31 per cent - 162 of 526 - ranger deaths

On February 20, 2017, Range Forest Officer (RFO) Daulat Ram Lader was having his ritual after-dinner tea with wife Pushpa when there was a knock at the door. Lader was posted at Lailunga, Dharamjaigarh forest division, in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district.

 Lader opened the door and stepped out to speak with the visitors. An hour later, he was found hacked to death  near his home, just across the local police thana (outpost).

 A month earlier, Lader had seized a tractor carrying illegally mined stones from the Kelo river, a tributary of Mahanadi and flows through the Lailunga reserve forest. It belonged