Daijiworld Media Network - Beltangady (SP)
Beltangady, Oct 4: Bending under constant pressure brought on him by the people of his assembly constituency to punish a forest officer who reportedly accused an innocent man of stealing wood from the forests and mercilessly beat him up although he lives beyond the officer's jurisdiction, the local MLA promised that the guilty official would be shunted out of this region within three days.
The promise came at the end of protest held in front of the forest department office here by various organizations on Tuesday October 3, seeking suspension of Ujire deputy range forest officer, Keertan Shetty, who has been accused of launching murderous assault on Kamaldas from Puduvettu, after accusing the latter of stealing wood from forest.
MLA K Vasant Bangera who came to the spot and met the protesters, noted that the assistant conservator of forests has already conducted department inquiry into the issue and that the divisional forest officer would be submitting the report to chief conservator of forests. He said that the minister has promised to take action against the forest officer before Saturday.
Taluk BJP president, Ranjan G Gowda, JD(S) taluk president, Praveenchandra Jain, district BJP Yuvamorcha president, Harish Punja, zilla panchayat member, Sahul Hamid, Fr Vinay Joseph, Congress rural block president, Srinivas Kini, Youth Congress president, Abhinandan Harish Kumar, Dharmasthala gram panchayat president, Chandan Kamath, Malayalee Christian Association state president, A C Jayaraj, mother of Kamaldas, Mariyamma, wife, Diana, children, Deepsan and Deepsal, and several other leaders and villagers were present.
A memorandum was also submitted to the chief minister and forest minister on this occasion. A procession preceded the protest.