Jumbo killings: Kingpin nabbed

BHUBANESWAR: In a significant breakthrough in  elephant poaching case, the Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR) and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) joint team on Monday arrested four persons, including the kingpin, for their involvement in the jumbo killings. The team arrested the kingpin, Mohan Majhi, his two associates and Sarfaraz, who acted as middleman. They were rounded up from Bakula, a peripheral village of STR. During interrogation, the wildlife officials found out an inter-state smuggling racket with networks ranging from Orissa and West Bengal to Gujarat. “There is information that the body parts of the poached jumbos may have been routed through Kolkata to Ahmedabad,” sources said. According to a WCCB study, Ahmedabad is the hub of illegal wildlife trade. Sources said Mohan was responsible for removal of the tushes and handing it over to Sarfaraz, who belonged to the same village. Although the tushes could not be recovered, the STR-WCCB team has found out vital leads. Basing on intelligence inputs, the team cracked down on Bakula, where Mohan was arrested along with two others who had helped him in removal of the tushes. The wildlife officials suspect that Mohan could also be behind the poisoning of the three pachyderms. “From the interrogation, it was clear that he has links with various groups for whom he worked on contract basis,” sources added. However, Sarfaraz did not dispose of the tushes himself. He is believed to have passed them on to another person, Allauddin, who sold them off. By the time the team went after Allauddin, he had fled. The three elephants were poisoned around October 27, a day after Diwali. Since access to the remote pockets of STR is difficult, Mohan and his accomplices managed to remove the tushes and dispose them of. The decomposed carcasses were spotted on November 4. The arrests have come as a boost to the enforcement measures of Wildlife Wing against elephant killings in Similipal since no such success could be achieved last year when close to two dozen elephants had allegedly been killed in the park. This time around, the Wildlife Wing adopted an important strategy by roping in the services of WCCB, a body under the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Sources said STR Field Director Anup Nayak and WCCB Deputy Regional Director, Kolkata, Chaturbhuj Behera led the team to Bakula and held six persons, of whom four were arrested after interrogation. Bakula, which comes under Dushiani Forest Range, is located outside STR.