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Closer home, ‘Peacock Goyal’ is back
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service

Timeline The poaching case involving Puneet Goyal had surfaced on February 29, 2004. It made headlines when the former SDM got bail in a non-bailable offence of poaching of the national bird. It was on July 29, 2004, exactly five months after the crime was committed, that Additional Sessions Judge Hoshiarpur cancelled Goyal's bail. Punjab and Haryana High Court, however, allowed Goyal's bail on May 25, 2006 directing the state to file a chargesheet within a month. The case is pen- ding in Hoshiarpur court.

Chandigarh, August 24
On a day when a Jodhpur court upheld the five-year imprisonment handed down to actor Salman Khan in the chinkara poaching case, the Punjab government gifted a plum posting to its officer facing trial in the peacock poaching case.

Puneet Goyal, the then SDM Pathankot, caught with the kill from Naroor village in Hoshiarpur on February 29, 2004, has been brought back as SDM Pathankot. Till now, he was holding the post of Administrative Officer, Public Relations Department, Punjab. Ironically, his position grants him the authority to issue permits for hunting - something with which he is himself charged.

It is pertinent that Goyal, despite being caught red handed with two dead peacocks and four dead partridges, had got bail in an offence that’s non bailable under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 which lists the peacock as a Schedule I bird. Duty magistrate Hoshiarpur had, however, granted bail to Goyal on the day he was caught.

To date, the case against Goyal is pending for trial and is on pre-charge evidence stage at Hoshiarpur court. It is significant that Goyal was transferred out of Pathankot only on the intervention of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, following a petition moved in the case by Sukhdeep Bajwa and Gunraj Singh, honorary wildlife wards of Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur, respectively who had caught Goyal poaching.

Even as of May 25, 2006, two years after Goyal committed the alleged crime, departmental proceedings against him had not been initiated. Irked by poor progress in the case, the then acting Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on May 25 last had directed the state to file a chargesheet against Goyal within a month. The high court had also ordered that security be provided to petitioners throughout the trial of the case as they feared threats from Goyal.

Goyal’s return to an important posting in Pathankot is naturally being viewed with by wildlife activists who are fighting to bring him to justice. Sukhdeep Bajwa told TNS today, “Now that he is back as SDM, he can actually issue poaching permits. That’s very strange as he was caught hunting.”

Meanwhile, the evidence on record in the case is also revealing. The postmortem of birds had confirmed that they had been shot. Forensic tests had shown that palettes recovered from the carcasses had been fired from Goyal’s gun.