Nine persons have been sentenced to three-year rigorous imprisonment for killing a black buck and eating its meat by a court in Solapur.
First Class Judicial Magistrate Archana S Nalge of the Solapur court also awarded Rs 5,000 each to forest officials who arrested the nine accused persons from a forest in March 2011.
Additional Public Prosecutor M I Beskar told the court that on March 21, 2011, the forest officials at Solapur received a tip-off that some people had hunted a black buck at Tandulwadi forest in the district and eaten the meat.
A team of forest officials reached the spot, arrested some of the accused from there and seized the meat.They also found horn and skin of the black buck in partly burnt condition in the vicinity. The officers also seized a binocular, an ice box, a sickle and a cooker containing cooked flesh.
Later, the other accused, who had fled from the spot, were arrested.
The analytical report of the seized articles by a laboratory in Hyderabad showed that the seized meat, burnt horn and skin was that of a black buck, the prosecution told the court.
The accused were held guilty under various sections of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, Arms Act and section 120(B) of the IPC.
The defence of the accused was that false case had been filed against them, when they had come down from Mumbai to Solapur to purchase land.
In her judgement, magistrate Nalge relied on circumstantial evidence as there was no eyewitness to the incident.
Dismissing the stand of the accused, the judge noted, "It seems that stand of defence is that accused came from Mumbai to purchase land and they are falsely involved in this crime. But then the question arises what were the accused doing in jungle area in the odd hours of night. Whey they were equipped with arms and other articles, which are obviously useful for hunting?"
The court also observed that the accused did not adduce any evidence to show where they were on March 21, 2011, at the relevant time.
