• They carried a gun, a knife and a searchlight. The Mumbai Police escorted the cars to Vashi, from where the Raigadh Police escorted them up to Lonavla. Sorap’s friend Sayyad Ali Hussain, a hotelier, joined them. From Lonavla the cavalcade was escorted by a Pune Police team, but soon Atram and his friends gave them the slip near Katraj and took the Hadapsar road to reach Nira village at night. Here, the searchlight was fixed to the front of Atram’s vehicle.

• Near Chaudarwadi village, Atram killed a hare. Sanas fetched it and put it in the plastic bag. After dinner he killed another hare.

• The first Chinkara was spotted four kilometers inside the forests near Morgaon and Atram killed it. Two motorcycle-borne persons from Chaudarwadi saw them in the act but when they accosted them, they were told that the man who had killed the Chinkara was a minister. The two men, however, apprised a local journalist about the incident and gave him the vehicle registration numbers.

• Atram and his friends killed a second chinkara a few kilometres away. It was this killing that the media reported.

• Early of June 14, the dead animals, which were put in plastic sacks, were cut into pieces under an electric pole near Lonand village.

• On June 15, Atram and his associates got up early in the morning and went to the forest where they killed two jungle fowls and a barking deer. It was then that Sorap got to know of newspaper reports about their exploits. He asked his driver to wash the vehicle (Qualis) clean and got it rid of the carcasses of the animals.

... contd.