Bheema, his brother ‘killed 2 dozen tigers’

Gurgaon:

Bheema

Bawaria, the notorious

poacher

and master of disguise who had been evading police in three states for 15 years, was sent to judicial custody on Thursday. He was arrested on October 17 from his residence in Gurgaon’s Surat Nagar area.

Before being sent to Bhondsi jail by Faridabad’s environment court, he was in police remand for two days where he divulged to the cops information about his partner in crime, his 52-year-old elder brother Hazari, and the startling number of times he had managed to escape prison.

Investigations have revealed that Bheema was involved in killing over two dozen tigers and smuggling other animal parts. Both the brothers lived in the same neighbourhood; like Bheema, Hazari too owned a house in the Surat Nagar area of old Gurgaon. They used to store the smuggled animal body parts at their homes.

Bheema revealed that in July 2008, the enforcement agencies had recovered a consignment of a tiger’s carcass, ivory tusks, tortoises, deer horns, turtle shells and a wild boar’s teeth from their hideout.

But Bheema, Hazari and their accomplice Shankar Mandal managed to give the cops a slip back then. The police had even got an arrest warrant for Bheema from the Environment Court but he was never caught.

“Earlier in 2002, Bheema was arrested in the Karan Prayag forest area in Uttrakhand’s Chamoli district. Later, in 2005, he was arrested in Nazibabad, in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district. Cops had recovered tiger skin and bones from him at that time. However, he managed to jump bails both times,” a senior cop told TOI.