22-year-old man held for hunting, skinning endangered porcupine

Vijayapura: A 22-year-old person was arrested after he hunted down a porcupine and shared a video of skinning it, on his account on TikTok which later went viral.

The arrested is identified as Manjunath C Badiger, a resident of Honnalli village of Sindagi taluk and driver by profession.

Reportedly, Manjunath and his friends on Sunday, March 1 found a porcupine in the outskirts of Honnalli village and killed it and shared a video of skinning it. The same video went later went viral on social media. Without any delay, the forest officials arrested the accused.

“As soon as the forest officials from Kalaburagi alerted about the incident we rushed to the village. At present we have taken one person in the video into custody and investigation is underway. The remaining three accused belong to the same village and one of them works in village panchayat as a waterman. Once we arrest all the members we will take them to the hunting site,” Basangouda Biradar, Ranger from Sindagi was quoted speaking to The New Indian Express.