The findings come nearly a year after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India
One poacher was killed in the shootout, senior police official Rajiv Kumar Mishra said, giving an account of the incident at a tribal hamlet set in a forested area of Madhya Pradesh state. Police found the carcasses of deer and peacock close by.
The peacock is the national bird and a protected species in India, and hunting them carries a penalty of up to seven years in jail.