There are more guns than tigers or elephants inside Jharkhand’s Palamu tiger reserve, but none with the forest department. Forest guards here don’t wear uniforms or carry firearms, try to avoid the loggers, poachers and sand mafia, and suffer violence from both the Maoists and the security forces. Caught in their crossfire in two of India’s poorest districts, these guards struggle daily to save this precious forest, its wildlife and their own lives.
Yahoo News, 22 May, 2014
It’s early April, barely a week before the Lok Sabha polls on 10 April. We are on the north-south Betla-Mahuadanr blacktop road that cuts through Jharkhand’s Palamu tiger reserve. Even before I set out for Maromar, I had gathered what seemed like an open secret. A 200-strong contingent of Maoists was apparently camping at Latoo village, a few kilometers from Kujurum across Burha river, for a few days. The CRPF camp at Baresand, it seemed, did not have orders to venture in and engage the rebels.
Every 15-20km on this arterial road, security forces have set up fortified camps. Maoists have blasted a number of Forest Rest Houses, such as Mundu (2004), Maromar and Kujurum (2007), for housing security forces but that has not stopped the CRPF from fortifying and permanently occupying forest facilities at Kerh and Labhar.
“Nobody knows at how many points these roads are rigged. They (Maoists) put 30-50kg explosives at undetectable depth when the road is laid or repaired. Later, they just dig through the flank [and place a detonator] whenever they want to trigger a blast,” warned a CRPF commander I spoke to the previous day.
In December 2011, in one such blast, the Maoists targeted Chatra MP Inder Singh Namdhari’s car a few kilometers from Garu village. Eight policemen shadowing the legislator in another vehicle were killed. We drive by the charred remains of that armored Tata 407, still lying where it was tossed aside, on our way to the Maromar FRH that was taken over by the CRPF for poll duty.
The officer occupying the only room with a functional toilet seems puzzled that I was issued a tourist permit to stay there. But he graciously offers me tea and some advice. “We control five kilometers around each camp. But don’t go towards Kujurum. They (Maoists) are holing up there since we have intensified flushing operations. Besides, some of our guys are new in this area and may feel edgy.”
Barely a month ago, a jittery CRPF patrol and a team of Jharkhand Jaguars, the state police’s anti-Maoist unit, fired at each other in the neighboring Kuku-Piri forests, injuring three including a CRPF deputy commandant. “Mistaken identity,” the officer says, shaking his head disapprovingly at my crew cut hair.
A few kilometers down the road at Baresand, I leave my SUV on the blacktop road and look out for a forest guard Shivkumar. “Aap ko Kujurum dekhna hai toh hum chalenge (we’ll go if you want to visit Kujurum),” he assures me. “Par apka marji, wahan koi garranty nahin hai (but it’s your call, there’s no guarantee for safety there).”
On 30 March this year, I am told, Maoist rebels warned the forest staff to stay away from their strongholds of Kutku and Kujurum forests bordering Chhattisgarh. The 15-km dirt track to Kujurum village in the core of the reserve starts from Baresand where Maoist rebels beheaded two ‘informers’ just outside the forest rest house last year. “Before that, in 2011, they shot another two barely 500 meters from here,” said Hiralal, a local wildlife tracker with the forest department, at the Baresand check-post.
Earlier in the day, I met one of the seven forest staff beaten severely by Maoist guerillas inside Baresand FRH compound some six years ago. “They had warned us against repairing the dirt road to Kujurum. Then one evening, as we sat around a fire here after the day’s work, they walked in, tied us up and thrashed us mercilessly,” he recalled. The road works have not resumed since.
Yahoo News, 22 May, 2014
Every 15-20km on this arterial road, security forces have set up fortified camps. Maoists have blasted a number of Forest Rest Houses, such as Mundu (2004), Maromar and Kujurum (2007), for housing security forces but that has not stopped the CRPF from fortifying and permanently occupying forest facilities at Kerh and Labhar.
“Nobody knows at how many points these roads are rigged. They (Maoists) put 30-50kg explosives at undetectable depth when the road is laid or repaired. Later, they just dig through the flank [and place a detonator] whenever they want to trigger a blast,” warned a CRPF commander I spoke to the previous day.
In December 2011, in one such blast, the Maoists targeted Chatra MP Inder Singh Namdhari’s car a few kilometers from Garu village. Eight policemen shadowing the legislator in another vehicle were killed. We drive by the charred remains of that armored Tata 407, still lying where it was tossed aside, on our way to the Maromar FRH that was taken over by the CRPF for poll duty.
The officer occupying the only room with a functional toilet seems puzzled that I was issued a tourist permit to stay there. But he graciously offers me tea and some advice. “We control five kilometers around each camp. But don’t go towards Kujurum. They (Maoists) are holing up there since we have intensified flushing operations. Besides, some of our guys are new in this area and may feel edgy.”
Barely a month ago, a jittery CRPF patrol and a team of Jharkhand Jaguars, the state police’s anti-Maoist unit, fired at each other in the neighboring Kuku-Piri forests, injuring three including a CRPF deputy commandant. “Mistaken identity,” the officer says, shaking his head disapprovingly at my crew cut hair.
A few kilometers down the road at Baresand, I leave my SUV on the blacktop road and look out for a forest guard Shivkumar. “Aap ko Kujurum dekhna hai toh hum chalenge (we’ll go if you want to visit Kujurum),” he assures me. “Par apka marji, wahan koi garranty nahin hai (but it’s your call, there’s no guarantee for safety there).”
On 30 March this year, I am told, Maoist rebels warned the forest staff to stay away from their strongholds of Kutku and Kujurum forests bordering Chhattisgarh. The 15-km dirt track to Kujurum village in the core of the reserve starts from Baresand where Maoist rebels beheaded two ‘informers’ just outside the forest rest house last year. “Before that, in 2011, they shot another two barely 500 meters from here,” said Hiralal, a local wildlife tracker with the forest department, at the Baresand check-post.
Earlier in the day, I met one of the seven forest staff beaten severely by Maoist guerillas inside Baresand FRH compound some six years ago. “They had warned us against repairing the dirt road to Kujurum. Then one evening, as we sat around a fire here after the day’s work, they walked in, tied us up and thrashed us mercilessly,” he recalled. The road works have not resumed since.
* * *
Shivkumar shouts for Ajay, a young forest guard, and two shiny green motorbikes gifted by a Mumbai NGO. We take the dirt track from Baresand through Jumri village into the forest. Suddenly, the landscape turns red. It’s a riot of fiery palas, flaming kusum and semal in late bloom.
Kujurum is one of the relatively less degraded stretches of this splendid forest dominated by sal, mahua, bamboo, saaj, khair and dhaora. Spread across 1,000 sq km, Palamu tiger reserve (PTR) was one of India’s first nine notified in 1973. Part of the Hazaribagh (land of thousand tigers) landscape, it remained a blind spot on the nation’s development map and became a hub of Maoist insurgency in the 1990s.
Decades of subsistence and commercial poaching almost wiped out the deer population outside the Betla national park area. But the elephant numbers are up, particularly around Kujurum. “It is very difficult to use this road after 4pm when jumbos take over. Also, one needs to watch out for bear attacks,” cautioned Ajay, adding that the 300-odd residents of Kujurum have to risk it all to reach the nearest referral hospital at Garu, 35 km away, in medical emergencies.
The dirt track bears no sign of maintenance. Ajay drives cautiously, dodging tree trunks laid as roadblocks. At one such barricade a few kilometers from Kujurum, he slows down to honk in a Morse code-like sequence. “This is to signal that we are from the forest department,” he whispers to me while scanning the trees around us. Not a twig cracks. He quickly changes gear and takes off.
The village is picturesque. We drive by a large pond, skirt a makeshift school and reach Kujurum FRH, rebuilt recently after the original structure was burnt down by Maoists in 2007. Across a patch of cropland stands an unfinished construction. A pucca sarkari school building was coming up but the construction work has been stopped. The village panchayat apparently ‘used up’ the sanctioned funds.
As we walk around, a message arrives that we should hurry. Or so I guess, because there is a hushed, terse aside between the villagers and the forest staff. I’m told life is not easy in Kujurum. The poverty is there for anyone to see. Elephants routinely raid these fields and leopards target livestock. There are also tales of occasional tigers. Many residents apparently bought into the government’s idea of relocating the village two years ago, but nobody talks about it anymore.
However, like all villagers inside Palamu, they enjoy Maoist protection. There are several instances when forest staff have been hauled up by the rebels and fined for booking wildlife offenders in the reserve. One forester who seized a cycle with langur meat had to buy the poacher a new cycle. Only a few weeks ago, another was picked up and humiliated by Maoists for beating up a villager involved in illegal felling.
“Two of us have been posted at Kujurum. We are safe as long as we do our job as per rules and don’t act highhanded,” Ajay shifts on his toes. The shadows are lengthening. “Par voh jab bhi bulate hain, andar kanp-kapi lag jati hai (but it sends shivers inside every time the Maoists summon us),” adds Shivkumar warily. “You never know…”
Kujurum is one of the relatively less degraded stretches of this splendid forest dominated by sal, mahua, bamboo, saaj, khair and dhaora. Spread across 1,000 sq km, Palamu tiger reserve (PTR) was one of India’s first nine notified in 1973. Part of the Hazaribagh (land of thousand tigers) landscape, it remained a blind spot on the nation’s development map and became a hub of Maoist insurgency in the 1990s.
Decades of subsistence and commercial poaching almost wiped out the deer population outside the Betla national park area. But the elephant numbers are up, particularly around Kujurum. “It is very difficult to use this road after 4pm when jumbos take over. Also, one needs to watch out for bear attacks,” cautioned Ajay, adding that the 300-odd residents of Kujurum have to risk it all to reach the nearest referral hospital at Garu, 35 km away, in medical emergencies.
The dirt track bears no sign of maintenance. Ajay drives cautiously, dodging tree trunks laid as roadblocks. At one such barricade a few kilometers from Kujurum, he slows down to honk in a Morse code-like sequence. “This is to signal that we are from the forest department,” he whispers to me while scanning the trees around us. Not a twig cracks. He quickly changes gear and takes off.
The village is picturesque. We drive by a large pond, skirt a makeshift school and reach Kujurum FRH, rebuilt recently after the original structure was burnt down by Maoists in 2007. Across a patch of cropland stands an unfinished construction. A pucca sarkari school building was coming up but the construction work has been stopped. The village panchayat apparently ‘used up’ the sanctioned funds.
As we walk around, a message arrives that we should hurry. Or so I guess, because there is a hushed, terse aside between the villagers and the forest staff. I’m told life is not easy in Kujurum. The poverty is there for anyone to see. Elephants routinely raid these fields and leopards target livestock. There are also tales of occasional tigers. Many residents apparently bought into the government’s idea of relocating the village two years ago, but nobody talks about it anymore.
However, like all villagers inside Palamu, they enjoy Maoist protection. There are several instances when forest staff have been hauled up by the rebels and fined for booking wildlife offenders in the reserve. One forester who seized a cycle with langur meat had to buy the poacher a new cycle. Only a few weeks ago, another was picked up and humiliated by Maoists for beating up a villager involved in illegal felling.
“Two of us have been posted at Kujurum. We are safe as long as we do our job as per rules and don’t act highhanded,” Ajay shifts on his toes. The shadows are lengthening. “Par voh jab bhi bulate hain, andar kanp-kapi lag jati hai (but it sends shivers inside every time the Maoists summon us),” adds Shivkumar warily. “You never know…”
* * *
One winter afternoon last February, standing next to a makeshift bathan (cattle pen) inside the forest near Latoo, field director S Kazmi faced a strange dilemma. A seasoned Palamu hand, he had served here as a Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) for more than seven years till 1998, when he narrowly escaped a landmine blast that killed his driver and a wildlife tracker. He buried that ghost in 2011 and returned as the field director. But Palamu had plunged deeper into anarchy in those 12 years.
On that February afternoon, an elephant death was reported near Panchnandi and Kazmi reached the spot with his team. The putrefying carcass suggested that the animal had died of poisoning. Kazmi spotted traces of buffalo dung near the spot and asked his team to comb the area. The search led them to a cluster of makeshift enclosures and sheds in the middle of the forest, and a family that had moved in from Chhattisgarh.
It turned out that the same family had complained to Maoists against a forest guard the previous year, which led to his utter humiliation in a kangaroo court. Emboldened by the presence of their big boss, Kazmi’s men were now hell bent on destroying the illegally-built bathan and confiscating a precious stock of ghee (clarified butter).
“There was only this poor woman and her small girl who sat in a corner. The woman argued with my guards, who said they would not budge even if they were to lose their jobs. Could I let my men go on a rampage that would land them in trouble? Could I stop them and break whatever remained of their morale? I wondered what the little girl was thinking. What memory of the sarkar, the State, would she grow up with?” recounted Kazmi.
There was nothing to link the family to the dead elephant. After a few tense minutes, the field director asked his men to uproot the pen, gave the woman 24 hours to take the ghee outside the forest and tried to strike a conversation with the little girl. “She was very shy but spoke clearly. I gave her a hundred rupee note. Maybe not the best balancing act but it was all I could think of,” he said.
The poverty in the villages inside the PTR spread across Palamu and Latehar districts, said one of the CRPF commanders I spoke to, was nothing like anything he had seen anywhere else in the country. “Guns may help save the moment. But we cannot make these people accountable for anything unless and until they have the very basics,” he said resignedly.
If the state’s development agencies have given this area a miss, it is partly because 17 villages and 190 sq km of PTR are supposed to go under water if and when the sluice gates are installed in a dam on the north Koel river, which was constructed back in the 1980s. The fates of the dam, these villages and the tiger reserve have hung fire since 1993 when work was stopped for violation of the Forest Conservation Act 1980.
“The fact that we still have some grip on Palamu in the middle of such chaos is because the people are simple. But they have nothing,” said Anil Mishra, one of Palamu’s two DFOs. “You will not find a single hutment with doors in our forest villages. They are honest people but also so poor that there is simply nothing to steal.”
On that February afternoon, an elephant death was reported near Panchnandi and Kazmi reached the spot with his team. The putrefying carcass suggested that the animal had died of poisoning. Kazmi spotted traces of buffalo dung near the spot and asked his team to comb the area. The search led them to a cluster of makeshift enclosures and sheds in the middle of the forest, and a family that had moved in from Chhattisgarh.
It turned out that the same family had complained to Maoists against a forest guard the previous year, which led to his utter humiliation in a kangaroo court. Emboldened by the presence of their big boss, Kazmi’s men were now hell bent on destroying the illegally-built bathan and confiscating a precious stock of ghee (clarified butter).
“There was only this poor woman and her small girl who sat in a corner. The woman argued with my guards, who said they would not budge even if they were to lose their jobs. Could I let my men go on a rampage that would land them in trouble? Could I stop them and break whatever remained of their morale? I wondered what the little girl was thinking. What memory of the sarkar, the State, would she grow up with?” recounted Kazmi.
There was nothing to link the family to the dead elephant. After a few tense minutes, the field director asked his men to uproot the pen, gave the woman 24 hours to take the ghee outside the forest and tried to strike a conversation with the little girl. “She was very shy but spoke clearly. I gave her a hundred rupee note. Maybe not the best balancing act but it was all I could think of,” he said.
The poverty in the villages inside the PTR spread across Palamu and Latehar districts, said one of the CRPF commanders I spoke to, was nothing like anything he had seen anywhere else in the country. “Guns may help save the moment. But we cannot make these people accountable for anything unless and until they have the very basics,” he said resignedly.
If the state’s development agencies have given this area a miss, it is partly because 17 villages and 190 sq km of PTR are supposed to go under water if and when the sluice gates are installed in a dam on the north Koel river, which was constructed back in the 1980s. The fates of the dam, these villages and the tiger reserve have hung fire since 1993 when work was stopped for violation of the Forest Conservation Act 1980.
“The fact that we still have some grip on Palamu in the middle of such chaos is because the people are simple. But they have nothing,” said Anil Mishra, one of Palamu’s two DFOs. “You will not find a single hutment with doors in our forest villages. They are honest people but also so poor that there is simply nothing to steal.”
* * *
A key employer in Palamu, the forest department spends more than Rs 50 lakh a year in wages for daily hiring. Yet, PTR is woefully short of manpower. Barring a few forest guards such as Ajay who was hired on humane grounds after his father died in harness, vacancies have not been filled since 1979. “The proposed strength of guards in my area is 129 while the sanctioned posts are 96. At present, I have only eight and four of them will retire this year,” DFO Mishra chuckled.
No wonder only so much protection is possible. In 2012, an elephant was shot in the belly in CRPF-Maoist crossfire. Backed by Maoists, the local timber mafia has cleaned out khair and teak from most parts of the PTR, according to local media sources in Daltonganj. Poaching for bush meat is common and among the buyers, villagers in Garu allege, are security force personnel.
Mishra skirted the allegations carefully. “Given the ground reality and our limited strength, we are doing the best we can. The camera traps in Betla and Garu have thrown up tiger images. Initially, Maoists were not comfortable with the cameras but we convinced them. Our staff routinely patrols the PTR on foot, including difficult zones such as Kutku. Security forces have occupied most of our FRHs. We understand their need but it makes us vulnerable,” he argued.
To Kazmi’s credit, he pushed the security forces out of the forest facilities in the tourism hub of Betla in 2012. The same year, security forces and the intelligence bureau demanded sensitive information such as GPS locations of water bodies from the PTR authority, to track Maoists camping close to water sources through satellite imagery. Again, Kazmi put his foot down to protect his staff.
“This action on our part will lead to Naxals dubbing us as police informers… [and the] punishment meted out to suspected police informers by Naxals is extremely severe, including possibilities of execution. This will make the movement of Project Tiger personnel into the forests impossible and it will completely cripple the Project Tiger administration,” he wrote.
His staff could not agree more. “We are safe as long as we listen to the Naxals. We don’t wear uniform or carry firearms. We try to avoid the security forces. But it’s not easy as there are so many (security) camps inside the reserve,” explained tracker Hiralal, adding that jawans too have manhandled forest guards and daily wagers hired by the forest department, branding them Maoist sympathizers.
No wonder only so much protection is possible. In 2012, an elephant was shot in the belly in CRPF-Maoist crossfire. Backed by Maoists, the local timber mafia has cleaned out khair and teak from most parts of the PTR, according to local media sources in Daltonganj. Poaching for bush meat is common and among the buyers, villagers in Garu allege, are security force personnel.
Mishra skirted the allegations carefully. “Given the ground reality and our limited strength, we are doing the best we can. The camera traps in Betla and Garu have thrown up tiger images. Initially, Maoists were not comfortable with the cameras but we convinced them. Our staff routinely patrols the PTR on foot, including difficult zones such as Kutku. Security forces have occupied most of our FRHs. We understand their need but it makes us vulnerable,” he argued.
To Kazmi’s credit, he pushed the security forces out of the forest facilities in the tourism hub of Betla in 2012. The same year, security forces and the intelligence bureau demanded sensitive information such as GPS locations of water bodies from the PTR authority, to track Maoists camping close to water sources through satellite imagery. Again, Kazmi put his foot down to protect his staff.
“This action on our part will lead to Naxals dubbing us as police informers… [and the] punishment meted out to suspected police informers by Naxals is extremely severe, including possibilities of execution. This will make the movement of Project Tiger personnel into the forests impossible and it will completely cripple the Project Tiger administration,” he wrote.
His staff could not agree more. “We are safe as long as we listen to the Naxals. We don’t wear uniform or carry firearms. We try to avoid the security forces. But it’s not easy as there are so many (security) camps inside the reserve,” explained tracker Hiralal, adding that jawans too have manhandled forest guards and daily wagers hired by the forest department, branding them Maoist sympathizers.
* * *
This atmosphere of fear, pointed out Kazmi, did not stop the PTR management from reaching out to the people. In 2012, DFO Mishra took 16 villagers from four PTR villages to Maharashtra’s Satpura tiger reserve to give them a firsthand feel of how the villagers there benefitted from relocating outside the forests. On their return, the impressed lot from Kujurum and Jaigir agreed to move out of the PTR. “Project Tiger was ready to fund the exercise. But it was shot down by the headquarters from Ranchi,” rued Mishra.
Surprisingly, Jharkhand’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forest AK Malhotra described the flagship relocation project of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) as “an alien scheme for Indian situations” before going on to justify his department’s stand. “We had plans for a couple of villages but we decided not to pursue it. It’s a Naxal-infested area and we don’t want to give any excuse to Maoists to open new fronts,” he said.
Sources in Ranchi’s Van Bhawan revealed that the forest brass was following a policy of ‘minimum initiative’ for Palamu. With the Naxal organizations splintering and a section of the state administration backing the breakaway groups such as Tritiya Prastuti Committee, the focus in PTR has shifted from the forest department to security agencies. The worsening chaos has spawned upstarts such as the Green Army, a breakaway Maoist outfit, which has burnt down several cargo vehicles to extort money from the owners in the last few months.
In this free-for-all situation, young, dedicated local wildlife trackers like Laltu feel lost. During his long walks through the treacherous forests of Kutku, he routinely encounters the sand and boulder mafia. “They work in groups of 20-30 people and have (manual) stone crushers inside the forest. At each point, up to 10 tractors do daily rounds to smuggle the material out. How can just two of us – a forest guard and I – take them on?”
Kazmi did not have an answer. Instead, he referred to his response to a list of concerns flagged by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2010 regarding forest governance in tribal areas. “People say this mess is due to tribal anger and the tribal is angry at the forest department. It’s a lie,” he said. The development and security agencies, not the forest department, he wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010, were responsible for the lack of education, healthcare, drinking water, law and order, roads, banking facility, the failure of poverty alleviation schemes and the public distribution system.
“The forest department is the only government agency to have field presence in remote tribal areas. And yet we do not get to build capacity here in terms of staff, training, funds and mandate. Without fighting poverty in those remote hamlets and villages, how far can we conserve our forests and wildlife?” he asked. “Has life really changed for Palamu’s people in 20 years?”
I threw the question to a few villagers and drew a blank. An old man volunteered hesitantly, “With so many guns around, dacoits are fewer now on the (Betla-Mahuadanr) road.” Shivkumar said his knees have become weaker. “I’ll retire this year but Ajay has a life to live in Palamu.” Ajay smiled and said, “It’s been a gamble but I like my job.”
Guiding us to Kechki FRH where Satyajit Ray filmed his Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) 45 years ago, young Laltu went quiet and gave the question some thought. “Don’t honk inside the forest,” he broke his silence to admonish my driver and turned to me. “Let’s go find tiger pugmarks in Betla.”
Names of those who feared for their safety or requested anonymity have been changed.
Surprisingly, Jharkhand’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forest AK Malhotra described the flagship relocation project of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) as “an alien scheme for Indian situations” before going on to justify his department’s stand. “We had plans for a couple of villages but we decided not to pursue it. It’s a Naxal-infested area and we don’t want to give any excuse to Maoists to open new fronts,” he said.
Sources in Ranchi’s Van Bhawan revealed that the forest brass was following a policy of ‘minimum initiative’ for Palamu. With the Naxal organizations splintering and a section of the state administration backing the breakaway groups such as Tritiya Prastuti Committee, the focus in PTR has shifted from the forest department to security agencies. The worsening chaos has spawned upstarts such as the Green Army, a breakaway Maoist outfit, which has burnt down several cargo vehicles to extort money from the owners in the last few months.
In this free-for-all situation, young, dedicated local wildlife trackers like Laltu feel lost. During his long walks through the treacherous forests of Kutku, he routinely encounters the sand and boulder mafia. “They work in groups of 20-30 people and have (manual) stone crushers inside the forest. At each point, up to 10 tractors do daily rounds to smuggle the material out. How can just two of us – a forest guard and I – take them on?”
Kazmi did not have an answer. Instead, he referred to his response to a list of concerns flagged by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2010 regarding forest governance in tribal areas. “People say this mess is due to tribal anger and the tribal is angry at the forest department. It’s a lie,” he said. The development and security agencies, not the forest department, he wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010, were responsible for the lack of education, healthcare, drinking water, law and order, roads, banking facility, the failure of poverty alleviation schemes and the public distribution system.
“The forest department is the only government agency to have field presence in remote tribal areas. And yet we do not get to build capacity here in terms of staff, training, funds and mandate. Without fighting poverty in those remote hamlets and villages, how far can we conserve our forests and wildlife?” he asked. “Has life really changed for Palamu’s people in 20 years?”
I threw the question to a few villagers and drew a blank. An old man volunteered hesitantly, “With so many guns around, dacoits are fewer now on the (Betla-Mahuadanr) road.” Shivkumar said his knees have become weaker. “I’ll retire this year but Ajay has a life to live in Palamu.” Ajay smiled and said, “It’s been a gamble but I like my job.”
Guiding us to Kechki FRH where Satyajit Ray filmed his Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) 45 years ago, young Laltu went quiet and gave the question some thought. “Don’t honk inside the forest,” he broke his silence to admonish my driver and turned to me. “Let’s go find tiger pugmarks in Betla.”
Names of those who feared for their safety or requested anonymity have been changed.
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