Missing Howrah girl traced to Jharkhand

HOWRAH: Four persons were arrested on Thursday in connection with the abduction of a schoolgirl, who went missing on Ferbruary 14. The 15-year-old girl was rescued from Sitarampur railway station by a special team of Howrah Police on Wednesday.

A complaint was lodged after the girl, a resident of Maddhyajaipur in Liluah, went missing. After preliminary probe, police came to know that the teenager was promised a berth in a dance competition in Siliguri by her neighbour Rupa Das. Accordingly, she left for Siliguri with Rupa and two other men. On being interrogated, Rupa told police that the girl had been taken to Asansol. A team of Liluah police reached Asansol on February20. After interrogating two locals, who are part of the trafficking gang, police came to know that the victim had been trafficked to Banka district in Bihar.

Acting on a tip off from another source, the police team rushed to Sitarampur and rescued the girl before she could be handed over to another gang. She was handed over to her parents on Wednesday. The girl provided police with some leads that helped them make the arrests on Thursday. Apart from Rupa and her mother, police have arrested Jamila Khatoon and Dipak Prasad, said Sukesh Jain, the deputy commissioner (headquarters) of Howrah city police.

Dolphin carcass found in Howrah

HOWRAH: The carcass of an adult Ganges river dolphin, listed as endangered by IUCN, was recovered from a sandbank of the Rupnarayan river near the Kolaghat bridge on Tuesday evening. Going by its size, forest department officials suspect that it is a female. They also suspect that the dolphin was pregnant. But it can only be confirmed after a post mortem is done on Wednesday.

Around 6.30pm on Tuesday, locals in the Naopala area under the Bagnan police station found the nearly 7ft-long carcass on the sandbank. They informed the forest department. By then, hundreds of people had flocked to the area to catch a glimpse of the rare mammal. River dolphins, though seen at times on the Hooghly, are not a very common sight on the Rupnarayan.

“We have taken the carcass to the forest range office in Uluberia. It could have been killed after being hit by a trawler. However, nothing can be confirmed till we conduct the post mortem on Wednesday,” said Gautam Chakraborty, divisional forest officer, Howrah.

The Ganges River Dolphin is listed by IUCN as endangered and is in Schedule-I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Once found in large numbers, conservationists now believe that less than 2,000 exist in the rivers today. WWF-India has adopted the Ganges River Dolphin as a species of special concern.

Hawkers encroach Bankim Setu, arrested

HOWRAH: The police arrested 13 traders on Tuesday. The traders were making attempts to encroach on the Bankim Setu.

Early on Tuesday morning, the hawkers demanded they be allowed to sit on the bridge and sell their wares. When the police did not allow them, it resulted in an altercation. A walkie-talkie set belonging to a policeman was broken in the melee. Later, the police arrested 13 hawkers.

Police said that they had been strictly directed by the district administration to keep the flyover clear as the gateway to Howrah should not be encroached. Earlier, police had evicted hawkers who had been occupying Bankim Setu.

Shibpur family preserves Swamiji’s relics

HOWRAH: Even before he created Belur Math, the headquarter of the internationally famous Ramakrishna Mission, Swami Vivekananda founded a temple dedicated to Ramakrishna Paramhansa, in a centuries-old house at Howrah’s Shibpur. The house was frequented by Sarada Ma and its owner Nabagopal Ghosh was one of the closest non-monastic disciples of Sri Ramkrishna.

After Paramhansa’s death, Nabagopal Ghosh requested his ‘gurubhai’ to set up this temple in his house, to which Swamiji readily agreed. Those days, Vivekananda and 15 other monks of the newly-formed RKM, used to reside at a math (monastery) at Baranagar. It is but natural for this house, which has a large number of Swamiji’s memorabilia, to commemorate Swamiji’s 150th birth anniversary on January 12 in a special way. Swamiji returned from Chicago in 1897 and it was on February 6, 1898 that he founded the temple at Nabagopal’s house. While in Berlin, Swamiji got three porcelain etchings of his guru done and the first of these he set up as the reigning deity of this temple. Needless to say that the second one is in Belur Math, away from public view, and the third at the RKM’s Dhaka math.

At the time of founding of the temple, when monks asked Swamiji the mantra for worship, he instantly coined ‘Om Sthapakayacha Dharmasya Sarvadharma Swarupine….Avatar Barishthaya Ramakrishnay Namah’ which later became the prayer of the entire RKM order.

Swamiji later offered the silk pagdi that he wore during the Chicago address and a crystal statue of himself, gifted by Sister Nivedita and made by Lalique, the famous French crystal artifact maker, to Nabagopal and his wife, Nistarini Devi, as his “most precious” possessions.

Curiously, there was no trace of the Lalique crystal for long. Senior monks of the RKM order, who are close to the Ghosh family, often asked them to search for it. “Recently, while rummaging through the unopened wooden chests in the house, I found it neatly wrapped and kept with other objects of worship. We were thrilled. We have informed the RKM also about it,” said S Ghosh, present scion of the Ghosh family, who is also a faculty member of Presidency University.

On Sunday afternoon, as one walked into this house that is steeped in memories of Swamiji, one could smell the strong herbs and insect repellants that have just been sprayed to preserve these and other objects that Swamiji and Sarada Ma used during their stay in this house.

“We have to be extremely careful with these priceless memorabilia. There’s always a danger of losing them to damp, insects and attack from other micro organisms. They are maintained by experts,” Ghosh said.

There’s a room beside the temple, atop the house, where Swamiji lived during his visits to the house. The bed on which he slept, the harmonium that he used while singing, the ground floor room in which the piano and the organ are kept, have all been treated as the house expects a large number of visitors on January 12.The Swami Vivekananda Janmotsav Udjapan Committee, has also kept the house as part of its celebration circuit.

Swami Purnabrahmananda, a senior monk of the RKM order corroborated the importance of the temple at Shibpur’s Ghosh family. “Swami Vivekananda reached the nearest ferry ghat on boat carrying the image of Paramhansa Ramkrishna. All the monks were with him. From the ghat they sang devotional songs and walked in a procession to the house of Nabagopal Ghosh. He founded the temple and also composed our prayer song sitting in the temple. The house is of great historical and spiritual importance,” he said.

Exotic birds land up on dinner plates

HOWRAH: While all attention is paid to their roosting sites like the Santragachhi Jheel, the winged visitors to Howrah and parts of East Midnapore seem to be facing a threat from poachers at their favourite feeding spots. While the situation may not be as acute as around the Bhitarkanika National Park in Orissa – where migratory birds are trapped on a regular basis and sold to restaurants and hotels during the tourist season – incidents of poaching have been reported from places like Uluberia and Amta. Environmentalists say that the situation may turn grim in the days to come unless adequate measures are taken. The state forest department has promised more vigil in areas where poaching has taken place.

The Howrah district is a study in contrast so far as migratory birds are concerned. While large flocks of these birds can be spotted in places like Santragachhi, their numbers thin as one approaches places like Kirap, Haropchowk, Rajapur and Joargori in Uluberia. Ideally, these are locations where the birds should flock to, given the sylvan setting and large number of waterbodies.

“Few birds come here nowadays. One can’t blame them. They used to be slaughtered by villagers till recently. Even this year, there was a major ruckus over the capture of birds by a few families. But, we think that they didn’t get the birds here. They must have trapped them from close to the Rupnarayan (that separates the districts of Howrah and East Midnapore) and brought them here to sell,” said an old-timer from Joargori.

Forest department officials, accompanied by the police, raided houses in Haropchowk last week and seized a few birds and nets used to catch them. Among these was an Egret, a domestic migrant that frequents waterbodies in search of food. FIRs were lodged against five villagers but they are still at large.

“We weren’t aware of the situation till recently. Now, we have decided to carry out raids on a regular basis. We believe that the birds were trapped near the Rupnarayan or in areas around Kharagpur. The birds are sometimes trapped in nets over which the poachers spread food laced with poison. These birds are then sold to unsuspecting picnickers or villagers who aren’t even aware that poison has been used or the ill-effects they may suffer. The birds may also be infected by some disease that we aren’t aware of. Not only is it illegal to have such birds, it is also unhealthy. Awareness needs to be spread about this,” said Gautam Chakraborty, divisional forest officer, Howrah.

Parts of Uluberia where this poaching takes place are crime-prone. Posters have been put up by the CID in villages, warning people against cultivating poppy. Villagers claim that ‘some’ people used to cultivate poppy a few years ago. Just as they ‘used to’ hunt birds earlier. “We don’t hunt birds or eat them. However, if you are interested in a place to set up a mobile tower, I can take you there,” a villager said in an effort to make a quick buck. Authorities, however, claimed that the cultivation of poppy and other criminal activities are rampant in these parts of the district. Villagers do their best to shield poachers when raids are conducted.

Some villagers consider poaching a ‘good riddance’ to ‘pests’ that gorge on their crops. Some of the birds are killed at night by guards appointed by farmers.

“In 2010, we had visited villages and got hold of several birds, including Egrets. The most favourite among poachers seem to be the Common Teal and Snipe – both trans-Himalayan migratory birds and domestic migratory ones like Egrets and the Lesser Whistling Duck. The poaching may not be taking in an organized manner today but unless steps are taken, there will be mass-scale slaughter,” said Arjan Basu Roy of Nature Mates, an NGO.

Records show that the number of migratory birds visiting the Santragachhi Jheel has dropped this year, in spite of a spirited effort to clean up the waterbody before their arrival. In 2010, over 10,000 migratory birds of nearly 20 species visited the lake. In 2011, only about 5,500 birds were spotted around the waterbody. Forest department officials and NGOs hope that the numbers will increase in the next couple of months. However, if isolated poaching turns into wholesale culling, the birds may stop visiting the district altogether, bird-lovers feel.

Compared to Uluberia, the population of birds near Kandua’r Beel in Amta, is certainly high. While Egrets and other birds flock around villagers watering their fields for the next harvest, there are clear indications that birds are trapped and eaten here as well. Coloured feathers of some unknown bird lie scattered on a narrow pathway between the farmlands. Next to them, lies a broken trap made of cane. Nearly every farm labourer who works the fields carries such a trap and leaves it hidden near the crops.

Hundreds of families of migrant labourers from Hooghly and elsewhere are camping around the fields in Amta. Few pay any notice if these families use the birds as a source of cheap protein.