On February 20, 2017, Range Forest Officer (RFO) Daulat Ram Lader was having his ritual after-dinner tea with wife Pushpa when there was a knock at the door. Lader was posted at Lailunga, Dharamjaigarh forest division, in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district. Lader opened the door and stepped out to speak with the visitors.
An hour later, he was found hacked to death near his home, just across the local police thana (outpost). A month earlier, Lader had seized a tractor carrying illegally mined stones from the Kelo river, a tributary of Mahanadi and flows through the Lailunga reserve forest. It belonged to one Dilo Kumar. “Kumar had repeatedly threatened Lader over the past month,” said Sub-Divisional Officer Chakrapani Sharma. “(But) Lader dabang type ka tha (he was fearless).” Lader’s murder was not an isolated incident. India is currently the most dangerous country for forest rangers. In 2017, 29 rangers were killed on duty in India; the Democratic Republic of Congo (17) and Thailand (8) made for a distant second and third, according to a report of the International Ranger Federation.
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