The Bengaluru-based actor had filed a writ petition in the High Court questioning the legality of a snap raid conducted by a team of Forest officials on his house in Malleshwaram, on October 25, and taking custody of a pendant embedded with what appeared to be a tiger claw. He prayed for quashing the notice.
The seizure followed a series of posts on social media complaining that the actor possessed a claw, while demanding action by the law enforcement authorities.
Justice M Nagaprasanna, hearing the writ petition filed by the MP, sought to know from the Forest department why it conducted a raid soon after issuing a notice to the MP seeking his response to the alleged possession of a claw even before allowing him time to reply to it.
When the forest team, armed with a search warrant issued by the Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF), visited the MP’s house on October 25, the MP was not at home. His wife handed over the locket to the team.
The BJP leader, in his petition, alleged that the forest team had ransacked his house in the name of search and seizure operation, disrupting his official papers connected with the Rajya Sabha session.The Court observed that the department’s action in conducting the search just an hour after serving a notice on the MP made the whole exercise look like a publicity stunt.The Forest department and its minister Eshwar Khandre dominated headlines, last week, after the forest officials took custody of Varthur Santhosh, from the sets of a Kannada reality show on October 23, on charges of illegally possessing a tiger claw. This set off a chain reaction with social media bombarded with pictures of film actors and politicians sporting pendants with tiger claws around their neck. Most, however, insisted that they were imitation, and not a real claw.
The minister, however, appealed to celebrities not to wear objects embedded with body parts of wild animals.
The department, meanwhile, has sent all the objects it seized to the forensic laboratory for examination.
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