Two young tigers were found dead in Shyampur Range, in Haridwar forest division in Uttarakhand on May 19 and 20, 2026. Their paws had been severed. Post-mortem examination confirmed poisoning from a contaminated buffalo carcass deliberately placed as bait. The mother tigress has not been sighted since.
This incident, documented by forest officials and confirmed by the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Vivek Pandey, occurred in a designated tiger corridor adjacent to Rajaji Tiger Reserve. It was not an isolated poaching incident. It was the visible manifestation of something the Indian forest administration has been quietly managing: organised wildlife crime operating beneath the surface of conservation success statistics.
For much of 2026, Uttarakhand’s government has projected an image of tiger conservation triumph. Official figures showed the state’s tiger population at 560 animals in 2022, up from 442 in 2018—a 26.69 percent increase. Corbett Tiger Reserve, the nation’s oldest protected area, held 260 tigers in 2022, compared to 231 four years earlier. These numbers formed the basis of Uttarakhand’s institutional narrative: a model state for tiger conservation, recognised nationally and internationally for exemplary protection measures.
Also Read:Corbett Tiger Poaching: CBI Names Officers, State Says Nothing Happened
The Concealment at Corbett
On April 8, 2026, reporting by The Probe on Corbett tiger poaching pointed to the nexus between poachers and forest officials in Uttarakhand. At least 40 tigers had died in a span of just two and a half years — a figure so alarming it shocked a High Court bench into calling in the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2018. Within a record 26 days, the CBI uncovered the cover-up: forged records, concealed tiger deaths, and forest officials allegedly directing the backdating of death documents. Then a Supreme Court stay froze the investigation. That stay has not been lifted in eight years.
The CBI’s preliminary findings, completed in the first 26 days of investigation, had been startling. Forest department records showed deliberate falsification. H-2 death proformas—the official documents recording tiger deaths—had been backdated. These alterations occurred on explicit orders of named forest officials. A tiger death had been concealed from the state’s Forest Minister. National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) protocols governing the handling of tiger remains had been systematically violated across multiple forest divisions.
Yet despite these documented findings, no prosecutions had followed. Instead, institutional mechanisms had been deployed to prevent the CBI investigation from reaching a conclusion. The state’s counter-affidavit in the Supreme Court, filed in April 2026, argued that a continued CBI probe would cause “unnecessary mental and social stress for retired officers.”
Days later, on May 19, exactly as the Shyampur poisoning occurred, this institutional paralysis became operationally relevant. The poachers who killed the two juvenile tigers were professionals. They understood the vulnerable corrid
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theprobe.in
