Gwalior: Amid an uproar over cheetah deaths at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, a former driver of the cheetah tracking team vehicle at the national park has made an explosive claim saying that the big cats were dying due to “hunger and contaminated meat”. Sunil Ojha, a resident of Pohri in Shivpuri district said that he worked as a driver of the Cheetah Tracking Team vehicle in the Palpur West Range of the Kuno National Park around four months ago.
Ojha said that the Forest Department officials have sacked him from the job. Ojha claimed that the cheetahs at the KNP were not dying due to the infection around their necks as claimed by the authorities. He said that the big cats were given little food and that too was “rotten” which is causing their deaths. Ojha said that around 200 kg of meat stored at the KNP for feeding the cheetahs had rotten due to ill handling by the authorities.
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Ojha further accused the authorities at the KNP of misappropriating government funds. The authorities recently attributed the deaths of two cheetahs at KNP to septicaemia (blood poisoning caused by bacteria) due to the infection around their necks possibly caused by use of radio collars. When ETV Bharat spoke to Prakash Verma, DFO at the Kuno National Park over Ojha's allegation, he said that the deaths of cheetahs at the national park are being probed.
Pertinently, five adult cheetahs and three cubs of the 20 cheetahs translocated from Africa have died at the Kuno National Park since Mar this year raising question over the Centre's Project Cheetah. The 20 cheetahs were translocated in two batches from South Africa and Namibia. While eight cheetahs were brought to Kuno National Park from Namibia on Sept. 17 last year, 12 big cats were translocated to KNP from South Africa on Feb. 18 this year.
