It was the winter of 1986 and as part of my administrative duties as the Divisional Forest Officer of the Sundarbans … I was ordered by the Chief Conservator of Forests to supervise the building of Coupe Office # 55. This was located in the Talpatti forest range and work was fortunately going very steadily. In the previous year, I was fortunate enough to have been re-elected to serve a second term as the DFO of these mangrove forests.
I was well respected by all of my range officers and amongst local residents, because of the recent success which my administration had enjoyed in successfully ridding most of the Sundarbans of the hundreds of pirates and heroin smugglers who used to be rampant in the mangrove forests back in the 1970s and early 1980s. Even though I would eventually gain a great deal of notoriety for being the man to singlehandedly shoot 3 of the only 4 man eating Royal Bengal tigers to be legally killed in this part of the world, I will always consider my life’s greatest accomplishment to be my administration’s successful campaigns against piracy and drug smuggling in the Sundarbans.
This, I had managed to accomplish through radical steps taken in 1981 when I was first appointed as the DFO of this region. After the Indo-Pak War in 1971, this part of the world was in a most distressing state of political turbulence all throughout the 1970s. Bloody military coups were a very common occurrence all throughout the decade, as various political parties struggled to become the kings of this new country. As a result, the forests all across the country had become greatly neglected since no government administration was stable enough to actually establish a proper Ministry of Forests. This was particularly disconcerting as far as the Sundarbans was concerned; also known as the largest mangrove forest in the world. Since this forest shared a border with West Bengal in India, it had begun to be used as a haven for drug smugglers and pirates and commercial poachers. All of that changed after 1981, when President Hossain finally brought political stability to this part of the world.
I was 29 years old when I was first made the DFO of the Sundarbans in 1981 (having previously served 2 terms as the DFO of the Chittagong Hill Tracts), and the President had personally told me “Mr. Habib, I hereby make you king and guardian of our nation’s greatest natural resource for the next four years. You have but one responsibility. Protect these forests from the enemy and looters at all costs. By the end of your term, I want to see every single pirate/poacher/drug smuggler eradicated from these forests by any means necessary. I am providing you with every available resource that you require in order to accomplish this. But do not fail me.”
I immediately got down to business and worked to identify the problems that had manifested itself in the Sundarban Department of Forests. It was quite depressing (and hard to believe) that around 90% of the forest guards appointed by the previous administration, did not even know how to properly fire a shotgun (let alone a rifle). For the life of them, they could not tell the difference between a birdshot cartridge and a buckshot cartridge. Several could not tell the difference between the pug marks of a Royal Bengal tiger and those of a Chital deer. When I first interviewed all of the forest guards in 1981, I was quite appalled that only less than 30 forest guards in the entire department were properly skilled with the use of firearms and were experienced in hunting (and most of those 30 were appointed to their positions back while the country was still East Pakistan prior to the war in 1971). I did not hold anything personally against the inept forest guards. Most of them were rural simpletons who invariably used to work as local farmhands prior to becoming forest guards, and thus could not be expected to contend with the dangers of these mangrove forests on a regular basis. Nevertheless, they would not do.
Being a freedom fighter myself and a veteran of the war in 1971, I knew exactly what I had to do in order to bring about radical changes to the department. Just like myself, thousands of young men had served in the war (either as conscripts or as volunteers). While I fortunately had (and have) a very loving family and home to return to after the war was over, for countless of these young men… that was simply not an option. Many had lost their entire families as casualties of the war, while others could not find themselves returning back to civilian life so easily. Many college/university students could not find themselves being able to return to complete their education (for a wide variety of reasons) after the war was over. Many were injured and/or facially disfigured and had become social pariahs. Many had lost all of their family assets/property/wealth during the war and were practically beggars living on the street. Many had lost their pre war jobs and were now completely unemployed (or were working in menial professions like janitors or car washers or mechanics or the like). What we had all over the country, were thousands of unemployed disillusioned young men who were trained in combat and with the use of firearms but were now being completely unable to do anything with these set of skills as society had pretty much cast them away. I changed all that.
Within the first four months of my administration, I had recruited exactly 2000 new forest guards… all former war veterans and each of them loyal to a fault. I had given these young men a source of income which they could be proud of. I had given them a purpose. They had 1 duty only- To put the very fear of God into every single pirate, commercial poacher and drug smuggle that inhabited these forests. And this, they excelled at.
So competent were they at their duties, that when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and her entourage visited the Sundarban mangrove forests in during a state visit to this part of the world in 1983… she was completely impressed by how well disciplined the entire department was and she compared them to British soldiers.
Anyway, back to the events of 1986. Work was going at a steady rate, until suddenly one day … disaster struck. Reports of a notorious man eating Royal Bengal tiger began to surface in the Talpatti forest range. 13 local woodcutters ( called “Bawalis”) had lost their lives to this animal, before news of these incidents finally reached my ears. The men working on the construction of Coupe Office # 55 were beginning to get increasingly hesitant to show up to work. The pace of work had begun to slacken. I immediately decided to commence action, in order to save the lives of the men under my charge.
The Author (Center) Greeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Of Great Britain During Her State Visit To Bengal With President Hossain (Far Right) (1983)
