Tshering Namgyal | Mongar

Few weeks after police in Thimphu and Paro nabbed a few men for slaughtering cattle, residents of Muhung chiwog in Mongar are alleging that some people are killing their domestic animals with poisoned arrow.

A villager, Karma Yangden, who lost her pregnant cow, found it dead with an arrow on right chest in the jungle about a kilometre away from the village on September 7.

She said she had to hire seven villagers to look for the cow. “I went to look for the cow on the evening of September 6 when it didn’t return home and shouted for it. The slaughterer might have abandoned it after hearing my voice.”

With children in school, it is only Karma and her husband at home. They release the cattle for grazing in the forest and gather it in the evening.

“We lose our cattle to wild animals and now with people killing them, we are worried more,” Karma Yangden said.

Muhung tshogpa Karma Lethro said he reported the matter to the gewog administration after the owner informed him.

He said this is the third time such incidence has happened in the chiwog in recently.

He said a villager lost her milking cow and calf too in 2019. “Another lost a cow last year also. Only waste and tail were left.”

According to the tshogpa, they had initially suspected wild animals but they are now certain that it is miscreants. “We suspect some people from Balam gewog and Sershong chiwog in Sheri Muhung gewog. Cow herders from the chiwog had earlier met some hunters from those places before but we have no evidence.”

He said that they have to do something as it is becoming a serious matter now.

Sheri Muhung Gup Ugyen said the gewog falls under Bumdeling Wildlife Sanctuary and he has verbally informed the rangers after the tshogpa informed him over social media.

He said the forest officials were on the way to Aja to investigate the incidences of tiger preying on cattle and hoping they would look into the matter once they are back.

Edited by Tashi Dema