A wild chase

BASED ON A 2015 PROBE THAT BUST A MAJOR IVORY SMUGGLING RACKET IN INDIA, POACHER PROVIDES A RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE WORK OF FOREST OFFICIALS

- DAKSHIANI PALICHA AND MIDHUN VIJAYAN

EXPLOITATION IS the price wildlife pays, as one character in Poacher puts it, "for being on the same planet as us". The eight-episode series on Amazon Prime Video is the story of a group trying to reverse this punishment by catching the exploiters and securing the future of a vital species.

Directed by Richie Mehta, who has also helmed the documentary India in a Day (2016) and series Delhi Crime (2019), Poacher is a dramatised narrative of Operation Shikar, a 2015 investigation to bust a large poaching and ivory smuggling racket. The operation recovered nearly 500 kg of ivory obtained from the illegal hunting of wild elephants in the forests of Malayattoor, Kerala.

The series portrays how a confession on the prevalence of the illegal hunting in Kerala-a state that prided itself for eliminating elephant poaching in the 1990sby Araku (played by Sooraj Pops), a guilt-ridden forest watcher who was helping the illegal hunters, caught the forest department off guard and drove it to find the perpetrators. Leading the charge are range officer Mala Jogi (Nimisha Sajayan), field director Neel Banerjee (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), and analyst Alan Joseph (Roshan Mathew) of the Wildlife Trust of India, a Delhi-based non-profit that aided Operation Shikar.