Bengaluru: The state forest department has accused wildlife expert Dr. Krithi Karanth of producing fake documents and receiving the prestigious Rolex Award.
The forest department, here on Saturday, June 22 had released a press note accusing that Krithi had produced inappropriate documents to receive the award. It had also posted the same on its Twitter and Facebook account.
Earlier, Krithi Karanth, founder of ‘Wildlife Seve’ had said that she had helped the families living near the Bandipur and Nagarahole forest reserves in getting necessary relief funds as they had gone through human-wild animal conflict.
Contesting this, in the press note, Bandipur Tiger Reserve Director T Balachandra has mentioned that none from any Non-Profit Organisations (NGOs) or individually had helped people and families affected by the wild animals. He has said that neither the deceased due to wild animal attacks nor people who lost their crops due to wild rampage on their agricultural fields were compensated.
The forest department has also countered the arguments by Krithi who had said that her organisation had received over 13000 applications by 6505 affected people and that she had helped them in availing necessary relief funds. The department has said that its officials had personally had visited the affected families and helped the beneficiaries in availing compensation.
He has said, “The forest department has not received any information on the projects and works that Dr. Krithi Karanth has initiated. Moreover, we do not have even a single piece of information on her relief activities. Hence the documents produced by her on these matters, stand false.”
Balachandra has also held the Rolex company responsible citing that even the NGOs associated with the company had said that the information provided by Krithi were far from truth and that the forest department too had tweeted on this. He said that inspite of all the necessary information provided, the Rolex company had not investigated into the actual facts and bestowed the award on people who had submitted fake documents.
