Ram Singh Munda was arrested and jailed for violating wildlife
laws, the bear was sent to a zoo where it refuses to eat and his
daughter was sent to a state-run boarding school.

Now animal rights activists are trying to win the 35-year-old
laborer’s freedom and reunite him with his daughter and the bear.

“We strongly condemn the manner in which the forest department
officials arrested the poor and illiterate man, who was not aware
of the government’s rules and regulations,” Jiban Ballav Das, of
People for Animals in India’s Orissa state, told The Associated
Press Tuesday.

Munda, a member of the indigenous tribes who live in the forests
of eastern India, said he found the sloth bear cub last year while
gathering firewood near his village of Gahatagaon, about 125 miles
north of the state capital, Bhubaneswar.

He brought the animal home, named her Rani, or Queen, and she
became a cherished companion for the family, which was still
struggling to overcome the death of Munda’s wife the previous year.

Television footage taken at a happier time shows the bear
frolicking with his daughter, Dulki, the two of them clumsily
trying to climb up on the back of Munda’s bicycle.

Wildlife officials saw the news stories and arrested Munda last
week for breaking the county’s wildlife act, which prohibits
keeping wild animals. If convicted, he faces up to three years in
prison.

“They have sent me to jail. How will my daughter survive?”
Munda told the CNN-IBN news channel as he was taken into custody.

“I cannot understand why I was punished for taking good care of
a bear that was deserted in the forest and would have died had I
not brought her home,” he said.

Munda said that when wildlife officials first approached him he
tried to return the bear to the forest but she found her way home.

A local government official, Biranchi Nayak, said Munda’s
daughter was being sent to a boarding school until her father is
released.

Ajit Kumar Patnaik, a senior wildlife officer and director of
the Nandan Kanan Zoo, where the bear was taken, defended the
decision.

“Munda was arrested according to the provision of the law meant
for protection of wildlife,” he told the Press Trust of India,
adding that sloth bears, native to the lowland forests of India,
are a protected species.

But animal rights activists say that while they condemn taking
wild animals out of the forest, the government was being too harsh
on Mandu.

“He never tortured the animal. Neither was he using the bear
for any commercial purposes. Therefore, we feel he should not have
been arrested,” said Das.

Animal rights activists warned the bear could be harmed and
might even die if the sudden separation from her adopted human
family was not managed properly.

The bear was being kept in an isolated cage at the zoo and was
refusing to eat, said Biswajit Mohanty, the secretary of the
Wildlife Society of Orissa.

“Bears are known for the strong bonding they develop with human
beings and therefore they are highly attached to their keepers,”
he told Press Trust of India.

Das said animal welfare organizations were getting legal help
for Munda and trying to make better arrangements for his daughter.

“We have decided to give him a job in our animal rehabilitation
center in Bhubaneswar as a caretaker” once he is released from
jail, Das said.