Guwahati: 48 hours of fear and anxiety end, as 23 forest personnel from Assam are safe and back home, two days after they lost communication with the headquarters after entering some of the state’s thickest and most remote woodland.
The 23-member group of forest personnel had gone out on a routine patrol near the borders of Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong districts in Assam, bordering Nagaland. Somewhere in that tangle of forest, they lost all contact with the district headquarters. For nearly two days, nobody knew exactly where they were.
The team set out on July 23 to survey the Langting, Maibang, Khepre, Manderdisa, and Hatikhola forest ranges. It was meant to be routine work, the kind forest staff carry out regularly in these areas.They had their last communication with the district headquarters on the evening of July 24.
Their phones simply stopped working because of the non-availability of the network amid the dense forest. The radio communication set was also not responding as it went out of network range.
But the missing of such a large group including two Range Officers, one Assistant Range Officer, and 20 Foresters and Forest Guards was not looking normal at all. Three more support staff were traveling with them, bringing the total to 26.
The Search
Top officials of the forest department in consultation with state police launched a search operation immediately. The area was once a hideout of several Northeast based militant groups. Fear mongers amongst the department and families of the missing forest personnel. Police sought the assistance of the Assam Rifles, local district administration, and a senior team from the Indian Forest Service.
Search parties fanned out across terrain that is difficult to reach even in ideal conditions as the area was largely cut off from mobile networks. To cover the dense forest areas where human reach was almost impossible, drones were used to scan the canopy.
After two days of intense search and look out operations by joint teams of forest, Assam police and the Assam Rifles the missing forest personnel team was located on 27th July.
Informing the safe return of the forest team Assam CM Hamanta Biswa Sarma said, “23 forest personnel went missing recently in the dense jungles of Dima Hasao- Karbi Anglong. After an intense search operation, all of them have been found safely.
This is a reminder of the challenging conditions in which our forest personnel work, to protect our faunal friends”, he added.
Stories like this rarely make headlines until something goes wrong. But to protect the wildlife and our biodiversity, forest personnel work very hard on a routine matter. Walking 50 kilometers to make the forest safe is like a daily job of our forest guards, said a senior forest official.
