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Cover-up bid at Nandankanan zoo suspected

Bibhuti Mishra in Bhubaneshwar

Debasish, the youngest Royal Bengal tiger to die so far, breathed its last after a two-day struggle at the Nandankanan zoo. This brings the toll to 12, and if three tigers which died earlier are accounted for, it is 15.

Debasish was born in 1997 at the Nadankanan zoo.

Though the post-mortem report established the cause of death as the trypanosama disease, and though chief conservator of forest (wildlife) Dr S K Patnaik and health team member Dr S K Ray have said there was nothing wrong in prescribing 'Barenil', a widely accepted medicine for the disease, what needs to be ascertained is the quality of injections and infection stage of the affected tigers.

There are indications of an attempted cover-up as far as the quality of injections is concerned. When two members of the drug control department visited the zoo on Thursday, for samples of the injection for tests, they were told that the zoo did not have them.

There were only two injections, of 5 ml each, while the need was for at least 40 injections of the batch numbers given to the tigers.

Dr A S Rao, senior veterinary officer of the zoo, explained: "All injections, except for these two, had been administered to the infected tigers on Monday." The injection samples were to be given to the Indian Institute of Veterinary Research and Laboratory (IIVRL) at Izatnagar in Uttar Pradesh, which is the only centre for such tests. Though the test takes six months, the state government could have requested it to submit the report in a fortnight, as a special case.

Said a veterinary doctor, who was earlier with the zoo: ''There is something fishy. They may be telling the truth or they may have destroyed the samples. It is easy to destroy evidence, for nothing can be proved conclusively."

This theory gains credence as all, from Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to zoo director B C Prusty, have been harping on a yet-to-be established fact that there was perhaps nothing wrong with the quality of injections.

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