A foal follows its mother through a tangle of vegetation in the deer park. Picture by Surajit Roy

Adina (Malda), March 31: Five deer have died in Adina Deer Park here in the past one month.

The forest department insists that the antlered inmates of the park had died after trees, uprooted in the recent storm, had come crashing down on them.

?The deer died when trees fell on them during the storms that hit the area in the recent past,? said divisional forest officer Debaprasad Sarkar.

But green groups and people living in the vicinity of the park attributed the deaths to starvation.

The spate of deaths has had an impact on the forest department workers at the only protected forest area in the district.

There are more than a hundred spotted deer or chital in the park though the exact count is not known to anybody, not even the divisional forest officer.

Sarkar said one Pradip Guha Neogi was in charge and that he had all the data about the animals.

When contacted, Guha Neogi pegged the deer population at 86.

He said as and when the population increased, the animals were rounded up and released in different forests of north Bengal. He said staff from the Darjeeling wildlife circle had taken five deer on March 21.

Asked about the accusations of apathy being levelled at the forest department, Sarkar said: ?Such allegations are baseless. The deer were fed three times a day.?

?The first feed is at 9 am. The deer are given gram mixed with rock salt. At 11 am and 4 pm, they are given leaves and fodder collected from outside,? he added.

Today, several tourists were seen feeding the deer in the park though there are signs warning them against doing so.

The animals, too, seemed eager to reach for the nuts and other titbits on offer, pointing to the fact that this was a regular practice. ?See how hungry they are? What is the harm if we feed them?? asked Bablu Pal, one of the visitors feeding gram to the deer through the high iron fence.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a member of the park said the deer were growing weak due to the meagre amount that they were fed. With the breeding season on, the population is on the rise. We have at least one birth a day.?

He said the supply of gram and even the leaves and fodder were not enough to feed the hundred-plus deer roaming the park.

?We have told the officials about this many times, but they have not done anything to increase the supply,? he said.

People in the village adjacent to the park, Satghara, pointed out that deaths were regular.

?Two or three animals die every month. The deer here are a neglected lot. See the condition of the animals. Do they look well fed? Does the park look well maintained?? asked Paran Ghosh, a villager.

The park was started with five chital brought from a facility at Bathuadahari in 1982. In the past 23 years, hundreds of chitals from here have been relocated to different forests of Bengal.