An alert police team of Kamareddy caught a gang of poachers who killed two deer in the early hours of Saturday (May 7), after a dramatic chase, as the accused tried in vain to flee in a car.
All the six accused, majority of them from Hyderabad, were hunted down and taken into custody. Along with the car in which the gang tried to flee, another car inside which they stuffed the two dead deer, an air rifle and six mobile phones were seized from them.
The prime accused Mohammed Hameed Uzzman, 48, who claimed that he was a competitive rifle shooter, and his associates Ubed Khan, 29, Mir Mustafa Ali, Farzan Gulam Hussain, 34, Syed Rashid, and Mir Tayeb Ali, drove in two four-wheelers to the forest area of Polkampet in Lingampally mandal of Nizamabad, reportedly late on Friday night.
“We understand two locals informed them that deer would roam in the open in the early hours due to the prevailing hot climate. Hameed carrying the air rifle came along with his associates,” Kamareddy SP B. Srinivas Reddy said. The gang sighted the deer and shot them down in the wee hours of Saturday.
They cut the deer into halves from the middle and stuffed the same in one car. A team of two constables and two Home Guards were deployed at Iyalapur village near a tank in which three persons drowned the previous night to retrieve the bodies.
Around 4 a.m., the police team was patrolling the area and grew suspicious on spotting the two cars from a distance. Constables Vasanth and Arjun and HGs Shankar and Rammohan started walking towards the cars, asking the poachers to identify themselves. “Scared on seeing the approaching policemen, the gang got into one of the cars and sped away, leaving the other car at the spot,” the SP narrated. The police team ran towards the spot and found the poached deer stuffed inside the car. The air rifle too was found in the car.”
They alerted the higher-ups who rushed to the spot along with additional teams. The police teams began combing the area looking out for the poachers. To their surprise, Hameed was found hiding in a pit of slush in the forest. They dragged out Hameed who admitted to poaching of the deer.
Police control room was alerted, patrolling vehicles were directed to block all entry and exit points of Kamareddy to catch the vehicle in which the other five accused were fleeing. For an hour, entire Kamareddy police force was on high alert. On receiving a tip-off that the fleeing vehicle was spotted near Fareedpet village, police teams dashed there, cordoned off the surrounding areas and caught the gang.
