Chennai, Feb 17 (BPNS)
The body of a 37-year-old person from Mettur in Salem who was allegedly shot by the Karnataka forest department during a hunting expedition in Karnataka was found floating in the Pallar river, Erode on Friday.
The person, Raja had gone to the Karnataka forest range along with his friends from Mettur and Dharmapuri on February 14th. Friends and relatives of these people said that Karnataka forest department opened fire on seeing them in the forest. The relatives of Raja allege that he got hit by a bullet and was missing.
The friends of Raja who went with him for the hunting expedition told media persons that he jumped into the river to escape from customs and was found missing then. The body of Raja which was in a highly decomposed state was recovered from the River Pallar and the body is taken to the Government hospital in Mettur. His postmortem will be conducted on Saturday and then only it could be clarified whether he got hit by bullets.
The Karnataka police had lodged a complaint with the Madeswaram Malai police station on the incident and had alleged that the hunters had fired at them.
With the news that Raja’s dead body was recovered, road traffic was stopped between the Tamil Nadu –Karnataka border from 12 pm to 2 pm. However, later the police dispersed the protesting crowd.
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