On January 7, 2026, Shri Jitendra Singh Shekhawat, a Forest Guard of the Rajasthan Forest Department, was killed in Dholpur District while confronting an illegal sand mining operation. He was doing what the forest field personnel across this country do every day, without ceremony and largely without notice. What followed his death was the familiar arithmetic of such tragedies: a family without an earning member, a modest pension that would take months to begin, and a silence where institutional support should have been.
That silence is the reason for this article.
How it began, and how it stopped
The Indian Forest Service Benevolent and Welfare Trust was registered on July 22, 2008 under the Registration Act, 1908, by a group of Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers then serving at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in New Delhi. Its origin was itself a bereavement: the untimely death of an IFS officer had left his family in serious financial distress, and his colleagues decided that goodwill circulated by word of mouth was no substitute for a standing institution.
The Trust functioned for roughly a year. Then the officers who had built it were transferred, and coordination became impossible. After 2009 the Trust fell dormant. A small corpus, built from voluntary contributions, sat in a bank account for more than a decade and did not grow. The intent had been sound; the machinery had not been built to survive its founders.
Shri Shekhawat’s death in January 2026 ended that dormancy.
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What we have done
On January 24, 2026, twenty-three of us met at New Delhi and took the Trust apart to rebuild it. The original Trust Deed was comprehensively amended and registered afresh on February 11, 2026 with the Sub-Registrar-I, Kashmere Gate (Central), New Delhi. A new Governing Body was elected. Eight new Trustees were inducted. Two committees were constituted—one for the scrutiny and evaluation of assistance proposals, the other for coordination with State Associations and Forest Departments.
Four changes in the amended Deed matter more than the rest.
First, and most importantly, the beneficiary scope was expanded. The Trust of 2008 was, in practice, an IFS officers’ trust. The Trust of 2026 covers every forestry field person —Forest Watchers, Forest Guards, Foresters, Forest Range Officers, State Forest Service officers and IFS officers including those on contract and daily wages. This was not a gesture. Casualties in the forestry sector are overwhelmingly borne by frontline staff. Any trust that did not centre them would be honest about very little.
Second, membership of all serving and retired IFS officers became automatic. The Trust is not a subscription club that one joins. It belongs to the Service.
Third, the functions of the Trustees and of the Governing Body were delineated, so that decisions could be taken quickly without the ambiguity that had paralysed the earlier body.
Fourth, a committee structure was created for the fair and time-bound scrutiny of proposals— because a family in crisis is not helped by a decision that arrives correctly but late.
The infrastructure followed through the first half of 2026: a Permanent Account Number obtained, a Chartered Accountant appointed, Vision and Mission statements adopted, the Trust’s logo finalised, the website www.foresttrust.in hosted with effect from March 27, 2026, an online form created for assistance proposals, a donor acknowledgement receipt format standardised so that every contributor receives formal documentation, and a State Coordinator and Nodal Officer network built out across the country. Registration on the NGO-Darpan portal has been completed. The application for income-tax exemption is pending.
Why we have done it
The case for this Trust rests on a simple asymmetry.
The forestry field person carries the highest occupational risk in the conservation enterprise and the thinnest safety net around it. He walks into human-wildlife co-existence conflicts, into the path of the mining mafia, into forest fire, into smuggling operations—frequently unarmed, frequently alone, on modest wages, far from home. When he does not return, the compensation available to his family varies enormously from State to State, and the machinery of relief moves at its own pace.
The Trust does not exist to replace what the State owes these families. It exists to reach them in the interval between the tragedy and the entitlement—quickly, without paperwork they cannot manage, and with an amount that is honest about being a token rather than a settlement. It also exists to affirm what no balance sheet can record: that the Service claims every forestry field person as its own, and stands beside them.
What we have achieved
As on August 01, 2026, the Trust has received donations totalling ₹21.54 lakh from more than 415+ donors since its revival. From this corpus, financial assistance of ₹17.35 lakh has been extended to eight forestry field personnel and their families — one Fire Watcher, four Forest Guards, one Forester, One Forest Range Officer and one Assistant Conservator of Forests — who were grievously injured or made the supreme sacrifice in the line of duty:
- ₹1.35 lakh to the family of Shri Jitendra Singh Shekhawat, Forest Guard, martyred on January 7, 2026 while combating illegal sand mining in Dholpur District, Rajasthan—disbursed February 11, 2026, on the very day the amended Deed was registered.
- ₹3.00 lakh to the family of Shri Harikesh Singh Gurjar, Forest Guard, Morena Forest Division, MP, martyred on April 8, 2026 while on duty against illegal sand mining—disbursed May 12, 2026.
- ₹2.00 lakh to the family of Thiru S. Radhakrishnan, Assistant Conservator of Forests, Tamil Nadu Forest Academy, Coimbatore, grievously injured in the line of duty and remains under emergency treatment—disbursed May 30, 2026.
- ₹2.50 lakh towards the emergency medical treatment of Ms. Rasmita Subuddhi, Forest Guard, Malkangiri Division, Odisha, grievously injured while returning from patrol duty—disbursed June 15, 2026.
- ₹2.00 lakh to the mother of late Shri Sohan Singh, Forest Guard, Tons Forest Division, Uttarakhand, who died battling a forest fire — disbursed June 22, 2026.
- ₹3 lakh to the family of late Sh. Hari Om, Forester, Mahendergarh Forest Division, Haryana, who lost his life on July 13, 2026 when a truck hit his motorcycle from behind while going for an official meeting disbursed July 28, 2026.
- ₹2.00 lakh to the family of late Shri Vikas N. Desai, Range Forest Officer, Vyara (Tapi) Division, Gujarat, who died while chasing timber smugglers in a vehicle- disbursed on August 01, 2026.
- ₹1.50 lakh (first instalment) to the family of late Shri Lakhan Singh Maravi, Forest Fire Watcher, Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh, killed by a tiger while patrolling inside the park- disbursed on August 01, 2026.
The wider achievement is not in these figures. It is that a dormant idea has been made into a functioning institution with a registered deed, a governing structure, published accounts, monthly newsletters, a website, LinkedIn page, a coordinator and a nodal officer in the States, and a demonstrated ability to move money to a grieving family within days of being informed. In under six months, the Trust has grown from a quiet bank balance into a living institution that five families have already had turned to in their hour of need.
What we propose to do
Three things, chiefly.
We propose to build a corpus large enough that assistance is dependable rather than occasional. At present, every rupee disbursed comes from what the fraternity has given, and the pace of our help is set by the pace of our giving. A dedicated corpus will place that response on a firmer and more enduring footing.
We propose to widen the base of contribution beyond the Service itself. Applications for income-tax exemption are in process, which will allow donors the deduction they are entitled to. A memorandum has been submitted to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change seeking recognition of forest field personnel’s welfare under Corporate Environment Responsibility and Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013—a step which, if accepted, would open corporate social responsibility funding to the welfare of the people who protect the forests that industry is asked to compensate for. Outreach to public sector undertakings and to forest-dependent industry is under way.
And we propose to shorten the distance between an incident and our knowledge of it. The Trust cannot help a family it has not heard about. Our State Coordinator network exists precisely for this, but it depends on colleagues in the field telling us.
An appeal, and a close
Every contribution recorded above came from within this fraternity. Each remains a token against what these families have lost. Our frontline staff face the gravest risks and hold the poorest safety net; the Trust exists to stand between them and that gap.
To those who have not yet contributed — please come forward, in any measure. No amount is too small. To those who have — please encourage your colleagues, serving and retired, to do the same. And to everyone in the field: when such an incident occurs in your division, tell us, and tell us early.
The strength of this Trust is the strength of the fraternity behind it. On Forest Martyrs’ Day, when we name our Eco-warriors and remember our dead, the fitting tribute is not the wreath. It is the assurance that no family of a fallen or injured colleague is ever left feeling forgotten.
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