Three held from Alipurduar for smuggling tiger skin

Police arrested three persons from Alipurduar on the charge of smuggling a tiger skin on Friday. The accused were produce before the court. Later they were remanded for three days police custody.

Police said that Nikhil Basumatari, Bimon Echelari and Maonia Narginari were trying to smuggle the tiger skin to Bhutan. These three youth were residents of Assam. But they were residing here in Alipurduar for the last six months.

“They came back from the Bhutan border with the tiger skin when the deal failed. On Friday morning, they were trying to reach Assam, but were captured by the police,” a police officer added.

“We caught them at Kalchini. They were trying to escape to Assam from there. They planned to sell the tiger skin to a different client,” the officer added.

The forest officers and the police started pursuing the accused near Subhasini tea estate area. Their car was stopped after it reached some distance. “We recovered the tiger skin from them. It seemed to be the skin of an adult tiger,” said the officer.

It will be recalled that the authority of the Manas National Park and Assam police found the skin of a tiger a few week ago and arrested three persons in connection with the case.

The tiger skin was found in Betbari, an encroached area in the Bhuyapara range of the park.

“We are suspecting that this three could be linked with that gang,” said the officer.

However, in Manas, the team of forest officials and police was tipped-off about the location of the tiger skin smugglers by a source. The tiger, which were poisoned, was taken to Manas from Sivasagar in 2006.

“We’ll grill those smugglers along with forest department officers. I think they are members of a big smuggling racket,” said the police officer.