Policemen accompanying the ARD team in Shibrampur. A Telegraph picture

Balurghat, Jan. 21: More than 800 households in five villages under the Bhatpara panchayat cooked the poultry they owned and had it for dinner last night.

The “feast” followed after a rapid response team from the animal resource development (ARD) visited the area, 8km from here, to collect chickens for culling.

Of the 1,500 poultry in Shibrampur, Dangi, Chakgram, Chakghatak and Chaksaran villages, only 200 were handed over today after a police team accompanied the ARD staff.

The police had contacted the local gram panchayat member, Dilip Barman, and asked him to ensure that the villagers hand over the remaining birds without creating any trouble.

“The ARD staff can come back again, but the villagers have eaten up most of the chickens and ducks because they thought they would not be compensated. It was some kind of a grand feast,” Barman said.

Sujoy Barman, a resident of Shibrampur, said he, like most others of his village, had no idea about the culling drive. “Suddenly, we saw some men dressed in strange suits and masks arrive at the village yesterday and ask us to hand over the birds to them.” A meeting was convened and the villagers unanimously agreed to cook the birds rather than hand them over to the ARD team.

“Since we heard that we would not be compensated nor would we be allowed to sell the birds in the market, we decided it was better to eat them,” said Sujoy.

An ARD team also met with a stiff resistance in Boaldar, about 5km from here, when residents were told that they would not be compensated. However, an intervention by the police helped collect the birds.

“We had held a camp in the area on the very first day of culling. Subsequent awareness camps were also held. No one came then. Now we have no instruction to compensate to those who did not voluntarily bring their birds to the camps,” said Samir Chanda, one of the members of the ARD team that visited Boaldar.

The deputy director of the ARD department in the district, Sritanu Maity, said till Sunday 67,794 birds had been culled and a compensation of Rs 11 lakh paid. “We are now doing a door-to-door surveillance and culling birds kept as pets within a radius of 10km of the state poultry farm where the bird flu virus was found,” Maity said.