Corbett scandal deepens as court shields ex-director Rahul from prosecution

The Uttarakhand High Court has stayed the state government’s sanction to prosecute Rahul, former director of Corbett Tiger Reserve, in a case that has come to symbolise India’s administrative rot inside protected forests. The order, issued by Justice Ashish Naithani, pauses what could have been a landmark trial on official complicity in illegal construction and tree felling within a tiger reserve — one of India’s most shocking recent conservation scandals.

The case,as reported by The Economic Times, stems from the Central Bureau of Investigation’s probe into rampant destruction in the Pankhro area of Kalagarh Tiger Reserve, where guesthouses, roads, and concrete walls were allegedly built under the guise of “eco-tourism.” According to the CBI’s charge sheet, the work involved the illegal cutting of thousands of trees and the flattening of forest terrain meant for tiger movement. The Uttarakhand government initially authorised prosecution against several officers in September 2025 but excluded Rahul, then the director of Corbett. Two weeks later, the same government reversed itself — sanctioning prosecution against him without citing any new evidence.

Rahul

Rahul’s petition to the High Court argued that the reversal violated due process. Once prosecution is denied, he claimed, the government cannot reconsider the same case, as that would amount to legal double jeopardy. The High Court found merit in the argument, ruling that premature action could cause “irreparable damage” to the officer’s career and reputation. It therefore stayed the prosecution order until final hearing.

But the real damage has already been done — not to careers, but to forests. The CBI investigation exposed how administrative collusion enabled tree felling, road expansion, and construction inside a supposed sanctuary. In Corbett’s buffer zones, massive earthworks were allegedly justified as “safari development.” The photographs and satellite images submitted to the court tell a story of concrete replacing canopy, and of budgets meant for conservation diverted into civil works.

Forests turned into projects

The irony is brutal: Corbett Tiger Reserve, India’s oldest national park and the birthplace of Project Tiger, has become a construction site under government supervision. From illegal roads to river embankments and tourist lodges, nearly every layer of protection has been peeled back by permits. Officials call it “infrastructure for awareness.” Locals call it destruction for profit.

The High Court’s stay delays accountability and sends a familiar message — that officials implicated in environmental crimes can hide behind procedure. The same playbook has been used in mining, dam building, and hydropower projects where prosecutions stall under the weight of bureaucratic protection. The cost is paid by ecosystems. Again and again.

Political pattern, national crisis

This case connects directly to the larger national failure to protect tiger habitats from administrative exploitation. Whether it is Corbett’s illegal guesthouses, Goa’s delayed tiger reserve, or Madhya Pradesh’s tourism sprawl, India’s forest governance has drifted from protection to promotion. The result is systematic habitat destruction disguised as development.

Under the Tiger Habitat Destruction framework, roads, dams, and human expansion are identified as the top drivers of tiger decline. Yet these are exactly the areas where state agencies keep building — even within core zones. When law enforcers become violators, every court order, every CBI inquiry, becomes a waiting game.

Justice deferred, forests lost

The next Rahul hearing is scheduled for December 11, 2025. Until then, construction scars in Corbett and Kalagarh will continue to tell their silent story — of trees that won’t grow back and corridors that won’t connect again. Staying prosecution might protect one man’s record, but it also protects an entire system that treats tiger reserves as real estate.

Corbett doesn’t need more hearings; it needs a reckoning.

The forest will not wait for December, while the defendant can come up with even more stories to delay.