DEHRADUN: A prominent environmental activist from Uttarakhand has formally requested the Supreme Court to vacate a seven-year-old stay order and revive a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into alleged tiger poaching rackets operating within the Corbett National Park.
Atul Sati, based in Joshimath, applied in early November, arguing that the Supreme Court was misled in 2018 when it halted the investigation ordered by the Uttarakhand High Court.
Speaking to the TNIE, Sati’s counsel Govind Jee alleged that “critical evidence, including findings from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the NTCA report, and an internal report by then HoFF Jairaj, was deliberately withheld from the apex court.”
The stay was granted in October 2018 on a petition filed by the then Uttarakhand Chief Wildlife Warden, D.S. Khati. Khati had contended that the High Court ordered the CBI probe solely on the basis of newspaper reports and without hearing the state’s perspective.
“Khati misled the court,” Sati’s application states. The CBI probe had been ordered after “damning facts” emerged about the scale of poaching. The recovery of tiger skins in Nepal, later authenticated by WII as originating from Corbett tigers, suggested a sophisticated cross-border poaching network requiring a federal-level investigation.
A CBI affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court in October 2020 revealed evidence indicating connivance between forest officers and poachers, as well as failures to follow NTCA guidelines in tiger death cases. Further inquiry is needed to confirm allegations of evidence tampering by officers. Notably, the Supreme Court had stayed the earlier CBI probe (September–October 2018) following Khati’s petition.
The application, filed through advocate Govind Jee, directly counters the claim that the state was unheard. It points out that Khati himself had previously filed an affidavit in the High Court, contradicting his later claim that he was denied an opportunity to present the state’s response.
The original High Court order in 2018 arose from proceedings concerning illegal constructions in Corbett, which also called for a high-level probe into poaching. An RTI reply submitted during the case showed that Uttarakhand Police had seized 55 tiger and leopard skins between 2014 and February 2017.
Sati argues that Khati exploited an inadvertent clerical error—orders from a 2017 poaching plea were mistakenly typed under a 2012 construction petition—to claim before the Supreme Court that the probe was ordered without due process for forest officers.
Sati urged the immediate lifting of the stay, warning of serious consequences. “The prolonged stay has effectively stymied chances of detecting and dismantling the transnational and inter-state network behind the poaching of tigers in the Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR), which was found to be active in Nepal, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana, and which may still be operational.”
Sati said he pursued the issue after successfully monitoring another court-supervised inquiry into illegal tree felling for a safari project, which led to sanctions for prosecution against several officers.