PESHAWAR, Feb 27: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday took suo moto notice of the recent killing of a markhor inside the Chitral Goal National Park and directed the Chitral deputy commissioner, district police officer and chief conservator of the wildlife department to arrest poachers.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Irshad Qaiser directed additional advocate general Naveed Akhtar to ask the chief conservator what action he had taken so far against the people responsible for the markhor killing.

While hearing routine cases, the chief justice pointed out to the AAG that the office of the court’s additional registrar had taken notice of a news item about the killing of a markhor and taking away of its carcass, and referred the matter to the bench.

The AAG was told that the court had already issued notices to the deputy commissioner, DPO and the chief conservator of wildlife department for taking action against poachers.

According to media reports, poachers had killed the markhor inside the park loaded it into a pick-up truck and escaped from the scene during night time on Feb 19.

The markhor is stated to be worth Rs 9.5 million. It was also reported that one of the guards on duty managed to recover head of the killed markhor from the said persons, who threatened him of dire consequences.

The guard had stated that they had covered their faces and were speaking Urdu.

An FIR was also registered against them but so far no one has been arrested.

The bench observed that if the relevant officials failed to arrest poachers, who were apparently influential, they would lose their job and would not be treated leniently.

The chief justice observed that unless influential persons were brought into the ambit of law, the rule of law could not be imposed in the country.

He observed that markhor was an expensive species and a gift of God for that region but some unscrupulous elements had been killing them for pleasure.

The bench observed that local people had made efforts for increasing the markhor population in that area.

It added that only through a legal process the annual trophy hunting competition took place there and around 70 percent of the income from that competition went to the community.