Supreme Court Dismisses Contempt Plea Filed Over Killing Of Tigress 'Avni'

A three-judge Bench of CJI Bobde, Justice Bopanna and Justice Ramasubramanian issued the direction while hearing the plea that alleged that reward announced by authorities to killers of Avni was granted flouting court directions.

During the hearing, the Court observed that the authorities in their reply have stated that the decision to kill the tigress was approved by the top Court, and  hence the court cannot review its previous decision and say that the tigress was not a man eater.

"If the decision to kill the tigress was given by this court in earlier litigation, we cannot open it now" the Court stated.

Regarding the other aspect petitioner's contentions that celebrations were done the after the tigress was killed, the Court noted that the villagers were celebrating because they were happy and that couldn't have been looked into by the officers. The Bench observed that according to the officers, they did not participate in any celebrations.

"These people were celebrating even when the investigation was still going on! This should have been objected" Sangeeta Dogra stated.

"Were the officers invited or were they not invited?" the Bench asked.

Advocate Kartik Shukul informed the Court that none of the forest officers were directly or indirectly present and the orders of the Apex Court had been followed completely.

The Court observed that while it understands it is a serious issue, it cannot interfere.

Last week, the court had issued notice to Maharashtra Chief Secretary Vikas Kharge IAS and eight others for allegedly announcing reward to the killers of Avni, an adult tigress in Yavatmal district in 2018.

In its previous hearing, Dongra had claimed that the forest officials killed 'Avni' on a baseless allegation that the animal was a man-eater responsible for the killing of 13 persons. Dongra submitted that the post-mortem report of the tigress showed that she was not a man-eater.

However, the bench seemed unconvinced and sought more clarity on this matter. The bench had asked Dongra to place on record authoritative materials to show that human teeth, nails, hair etc., will remain in the animal intestine for a period of 6 months and that such particles were not found within the body of 'Avni'.

At the same time, the bench had observed that the petition raised an "important point" regarding the flouting of court orders prohibiting awarding of rewards to persons who kill wild animals.

In 2018, the Supreme Court had permitted the killing of 'Avni', officially known as 'T1', if the attempts to tranquilize her fail. The Court also ordered that no prize or incentive should be declared for any person responsible for the killing of the T1.

The tigress was killed in November 2018 after a massive over-night operation. The elimination of the tigress was condemned by several wild life activists, who termed it a 'state sponsored fake encounter