Poachers kill rhino in Kaziranga,second in 4 months

Kaziranga National Park on Tuesday lost a full-grown female rhino when poachers not only managed to sneak into the Park to shoot down the animal but also escaped with its horn,official sources said.

The incident occurred at around 2 am in the Burrapahar range of the 850-sq km national park,which boasts of being home to the highest number of any species of rhinos in the world. Tuesdays was the second killing of a rhino inside Kaziranga in the current year,the earlier being in April.

Assam has altogether lost four rhinos to poachers this year with two incidents occurring outside the Park area.

In one instance,the poachers could not remove the horn due to an alarm raised by people of an adjoining village. Kaziranga,which had completed its 100 years of rhino conservation in 2005,at present has about 2,000 rhinos.