Expert says report tweaked by government to show no monkey died in city wildlife sanctuary
Malik now says the government misused her report and created a false impression, as she had exposed large-scale irregularities which the government - in its report - conveniently omitted.
Primatologist Iqbal Malik has blown the lid off "large-scale irregularities" in managing monkeys in Asola-Bhatti, Delhi's lone wildlife sanctuary.
Her charge is serious because early this year, the Delhi government used her expert report to save its skin and said that no monkey died when the wildlife department failed to supply feed to the animals for three weeks in December last year.
The contractor had stopped supplies because of pending bills. On Sunday, she also wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and raised the larger issue of human-monkey conflict.
Malik now says the government misused her report and created a false impression, as she had exposed large-scale irregularities which the government - in its report - conveniently omitted. "The condition of monkeys in the sanctuary is much worse than it was before they were translocated from urban areas," she said.
Delhi's Lt Governor Najeeb Jung had on December 27 ordered a probe after animal activist and Union minister Maneka Gandhi apprehended that some 1,000 monkeys had starved to death in the 4,845-acre south Delhi sanctuary. "I did say the monkeys cannot be dying just because the official feed, which is not their sole source of diet, stopped. But I also pointed out a lot of other things that's wrong with the way the government is managing the monkeys and the sanctuary," she said.
Govt's request
"The government requested with folded hands for my recommendations every time there was a monkey-related crisis. But they never followed my recommendations. I am extremely disappointed," she told Mail Today.
When contacted, forest and wildlife department head Tarun Coomar said: "I have full confidence in Malik's knowledge and expertise. I will certainly heed her and other experts' advice. We will do everything that's needed to be done in the interest of wildlife and the sanctuary. But she gave her inputs to a probe committee and the final report hasn't come to us. She would have no reason to be disappointed."
Malik says supplying feed to monkeys was never part of the longterm strategy. "Large sums of money were allocated to plant trees, vegetation and build wells. Where did the money go? No tender was done. The contract was given to one particular supplier," Malik pointed out.
Since 2007, when translocation of monkeys started after Delhi's deputy mayor died in a monkey attack, `8 crore has been spent on the daily feed that comprises 2,500 kg of fruits and vegetables. The municipal corporations have shifted more than 19,000 monkeys to the sanctuary.
The wildlife department insists even without tenders, there have been no irregularities as the rates are approved by a government price regulator. Officials say the rates (of fruits, vegetables) keep varying, a reason why tenders could not be floated. A process has started to make the system completely transparent, said an official.
The Delhi High Court had in its order asked the wildlife department to feed the rehabilitated monkeys. Corporations had been told to collect food offerings from temples and use them to feed the simians. To offset rising food bills, the forest department was instructed to raise fruitbearing trees that could be utilised to feed the animals.
Malik had in her report said since no carcass has been found, so it was unlikely that monkeys had starved to death due to nonavailability of food. Sonya Ghosh, member of a court-appointed panel on monkeys' translocation, countered her view. "Since a census has never been done to ascertain the number of monkeys in the sanctuary, it is difficult to assess the number of deaths. Perhaps this is the reason why a census was never carried out in the first place. The absence of monkey carcasses could simply mean that there is a shortage of staff to comb every part of the sanctuary."
Malik says all government steps have been half-hearted, haphazard, non-scientific, just an eyewash, soaked in corruption and, thus, failed. "Unplanned, haphazard and secretive way of trapping and releasing in Bhatti area has continued. Monkeys could not be contained in Bhatti without a proper sanctuary and as the boundary was hardly a hindrance monkeys made life miserable for the villagers of the area," she said.