MITHI, Jan 30: A team of officials of the wildlife department claimed after visiting a number of villages in Kehri and Manjhthi union councils in Mithi taluka on Sunday that they did not see any evidence of death of a large number of peacocks from a ‘mysterious disease’.

Lajpat Sharma, game official of Tharparkar, who led the team, said that they had visited Piluro, Katan, Jhangro, Kehri, Morano and other villages in wake of reports in media that a mysterious disease was killing scores of peacocks in Thar villages.

However, he said, they saw only one carcass of a peahen in a village and a diseased peacock with swollen eyes in another village but did not receive any reports of dying of peacocks on a large scale from adjoining villages. The team was still visiting different to get to the bottom of the claim, he said.

Bharumal Amrani, an activist who works for protection of flora and fauna of Thar, said that the moment the bird was dead dogs and cats tore away its carcass leaving nothing behind that could be taken as a proof of bird’s death fro the disease.—Correspondent

Meanwhile a veterinary doctor of Mirpurkhas, Abdul Aziz, also visited Kehri village, where the villagers brought to him a diseased peacock. The doctor took its samples for laboratory test and gave it an injection but it was no help as it died soon afterwards.

According to sources, the villagers told the doctor that a large number of peacocks died from mysterious diseases over the past couple of days in the village and adjoining areas.