TOI had exposed the racket on Sunday by reporting the arrest of four persons, including Singh, an Uttar Pradesh-based businessman, for trying to smuggle a consignment of nine elephants that were trapped in the wild, ‘tamed' in secret locations in Arunachal Pradesh and readied for transport to West Bengal and Bihar under false documents.
The ones running the racket have turned so brazen that they advertise it on their business cards.
If this gang had not been busted, no less than 15 elephants from various parts of Assam would have ended up in clandestine markets in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Nepal, say police. The operation to smash this ring was code-named ‘Little Ganesh' and led by Kokrajhar SP P K Dutta. In a quirk of fate, he ended up rescuing a calf caught from the wild that was named Little Laxman. Read the full report here.
Source: Naresh Mitra, TNN, Kokrajhar.
