The state forest department has lodged a complaint against three persons in Nadia’s Santipur allegedly for killing two civet cats and cooking their meat for a feast.

Acting on a tip-off about the alleged feast, a team of forest officials conducted a raid in Gobindapur village of Santipur on Sunday afternoon and recovered the chopped flesh of the civets that reportedly was in the process of being cooked inside a residential premises.

The accused trio, however, managed to flee.

Santipur police have started a case against the trio on the basis of a complaint lodged by the forest department. Police and forest officials, however, refused to disclose their identities for the sake of the probe.

Sources said that senior officials of Krishnanagar forest range could not ascertain how wild cats were killed as they were only able to recover a partial amount of the flesh and two charred animal heads.

“We will send recovered samples of flesh for identification of the species to the Zoological Survey of India’s laboratory in Calcutta”, range officer Payel Dutta told The Telegraph, adding this was needed to ascertain how the animals were actually killed.

The civet cat is an endangered animal in India owing to its dwindling population. It is enlisted in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Conservation Act, 1972.

Sources in the forest department at Krishnanagar said that senior officials got a tip-off about the alleged feast organised by the accused persons and rushed to the spot.

“We received a call about the feast with the meat of civet cats that were killed. We traced the meat but the accused managed to flee. So it couldn’t be ascertained when the cats were killed. We served notices naming the accused and asking them to appear before us. A police complaint has been lodged,” range officer Dutta said.

A forest official of Nadia-Murshidabad division said: “The large Indian civet often evokes fear among people at night, but in reality, it is a shy animal and seldom attacks people unless attacked.”

Civets mostly feed on hens and birds, but have been observed to eat sweet-tasting fruits, he said.

Grenade on court premises

A bomb detection and disposal squad of the Indian army disposed of a hand grenade on the district court premises in Cooch Behar on Sunday.

Sources said that on February 7, when policemen were cleaning the court malkhana or space where properties seized by the police are kept, they spotted the grenade in a packet of cannabis.

The army was informed and a team was sent from the engineer regiment of Binnaguri military station in Jalpaiguri, which on scrutiny opined that the grenade had to be disposed of within court premises. The court granted permission and the grenade was disposed of safely through controlled explosion.

Police are probing how the grenade reached the site.