A team of forest department conducted a special operation in Dehradun on Wednesday to rescue a trapped civet cat (Bijju) from a pit. Morning walkers heard the sound of an animal crying in pain from the pit, which was covered with an iron grill, on the Rajpur road near the President’s Bodyguard estate. They informed the police and the city rescue team of the Uttarakhand forest department was approached for rescuing the mammal.
The operation started with the forest team deploying machine to remove the fixed iron grill. The civet was spotted inside the pit. City rescue team member Ravi Joshi said, “The pit was about 12 feet deep and the civet had got trapped there. The animal possibly fell down through the drain pipe. I jumped into the pit and rescued the adult Bijju. The civet was released in the wild near Aasarodi.”
The civet was possibly moving in the pipe in search of food and got trapped by falling into the pit. Morning walkers heard the sound coming from the pit and by using their mobile phone light they saw the civet. They failed to recognize the animal and told cops that a small fox has got trapped inside the trench.
Civet cats continue to create trouble in many places in Dehradun city. The most interesting case took place at the state secretariat, where civet cats created terror in the office of a senior bureaucrat. Despite repeated efforts when the forest team failed to catch the civets, they had to use advanced techniques. The false ceiling of additional chief secretary Om Prakash was removed and fogging was done to catch four civet cats.
This incident in the state secretariat took place last year, but very recently civets were removed from State Bank of India’s Kanwali road branch and from a blood bank. The city rescue team has captured 26 civet cats from different parts of the city in over one year.