Times News Network
Mysore Aug 11: Call it coincidence. Two days after poacher Imbali Jose hit the headlines as the new Veerappan, now comes the news that he is dead. He was suffering from kidney failure apart from a few other illnesses, said forest officials. He was cremated early Thursday morning at his village Pulpally in Waynad district of Kerala.
A team of officials from Karnataka CID, forest cell, have left for Pulpally. KSN Chikkerur, IGP, Karnataka CID, forest cell, said, "We are verifying the news of his death. In 2004 September, the CID officials received a message that the poacher had died. But on verification, they found that a poacher, also named Jose, had died."
Imbali Jose, 45, was wanted in over 20 cases of poaching in Kerala and several cases in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Chief conservator of forests (Wildlife) V Gopinathan said some 30 poacher gangs operating on the Kerala-Karnataka border had lost much steam in the past two years after Dhanesh Kumar, a young forest ranger in Waynad, began a war against criminals.
But the trouble is that these criminals can easily escape into Karnataka, Kerala or Tamil Nadu forests, making detection difficult.
Almost all of them have mastered the languages of these states so they can get away with threats and extortion of money, he said. Imbali Jose hailed from a settlers’ family in Pulpally, bordering Karnataka. He began poaching two decades ago.
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