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Two arrested in connection with poaching of Kuno cheetah cub

Two arrested in connection with poaching of Kuno cheetah cub

Two suspects were arrested for the poaching of a cheetah cub from Kuno National Park in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. ANI reported that the Special Task Force in Madhya Pradesh arrested Bhagwan Singh and his brother Pritam Singh for allegedly hunting the animal using a licensed muzzle-loading shotgun in the forests of Sheopur. The 19-month-old male cub had died from pellet injuries on October 26, a day after a monitoring team found it wounded in the Morena territorial forest division and sent it to the veterinary institute in Jabalpur. ANI stated that the accused were booked under sections of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 pertaining to hunting. This marks the first killing and the 25th death of a cheetah since the reintroduction of the wild animal to India in 2022, when cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were brought back seven decades after being declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. The country now has a total of 54 cheetahs, with 50 located in Kuno National Park and four in the Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary.

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