Crocodiles in captivity? Bundelkhand fetishist lands former MP in troubled waters

That the rich and powerful of Bundelkhand have a fetish for keeping crocodiles in their vast estates was reestablished when a team from the Madhya Pradesh forest department rescued two such reptiles from a pond connected to a well in the house of former BJP MP Harvansh Singh Rathore. in Sagar.

A day earlier, two more crocodiles were rescued from Rathore premises. The discovery was made during a tax search.

Rathore, who represented Banda constituency in the Legislative Assembly, is the son of late Harnam Singh Rathore, former minister of the state. The Rathores are an important political family of Sagar.

The pond where the reptiles were found is next to a temple. The priest, Bhupendra Tiwari, admitted to being the caretaker of the animals.

Tiwari was registered under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The forest department also found several wildlife trophies in his house, but these were found to be duly registered.

Keeping dangerous animals as pets is a tradition in caste-fragmented Bundelkhand, as is keeping hunted animals as trophies. Former MP Ashok Veer Vikram allegedly kept crocodiles in his private lake in Chhattarpur, also in Bundelkhand.

Uttar Pradesh politician Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya has been asked several times if he breeds crocodiles in his estate’s lake. Singh denied it, pointing out that he is into fishing and that breeding crocodiles in the same lake would be counterproductive to his business. Singh, however, said that the lake in his estate is connected to the Ganga river, so the possibility of crocodiles swimming up to his lake cannot be ruled out.

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