BHAWANIPATNA: Livestock Inspector of Karlapat wildlife sanctuary, Ganesh Pujari was suspended on Sunday for dereliction of duty.Chief District Veterinary Officer (CDVO) Chaitanya Sethi said Pujari had failed to maintain a record of number of cattle being vaccinated in villages within the sanctuary. The vaccination drive was started after the death of seven elephants within a fortnight due to haemorrhagic septicemia. Sethi said three cattle have died of the disease in the villages recently.
Kalahandi DFO Ashok Kumar said the Forest department has deployed 10 teams to track the movement of elephants in the sanctuary. He said the teams are briefed at 6 am every morning and sent to different locations in the forest to track the elephants.
The three-member Central team, which inspected the locations where the elephant deaths were recorded, stumbled upon the decomposed carcass of an elephant calf near Ghusurigudi stream in the sanctuary on Saturday.
Earlier, Forest department believed that the spread of haemorrhagic septicemia has been contained since there were no more elephant deaths.The team from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change detected the jumbo calf carcass during a field visit to the wildlife sanctuary.