14 DAY TRIAL // Until a few days ago, the Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park in Assam, India was quite proud to be a “zero-poaching” area. Leave it to a bunch of people looking to make a few bucks by slaughtering rhinos and selling their horns on the black market to strip the Orang National Park of this distinction.
Time of India reports that, this past Saturday night, local rangers found that a male rhino had been killed by poachers. By the time rangers reached the scene of the murder, the poachers had already chopped off the animal's horn, bagged it and made a smooth getaway.
Information shared with the public says that the people who killed the rhino used rather sophisticated weaponry.
“We found three empty cartridges on the spot. The cartridges, however, seemed to belong to sophisticated firearms and not of .303 rifle usually used by the poachers to kill rhino,” a park official reportedly told members of the press.
“It's indeed a sad event for us. This year, we successfully managed to make Orang poaching free till the Saturday incident,” he added.
By the looks of it, the rhino was not killed within the Park's premises, but at a distance of roughly 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) from it.
Rangers explain that the animal must have somehow strayed outside the protected area, and that the reason why nobody heard the gunshots was because they blended in with the sound of the firecrackers fired up during the local Diwali festivity.