Guwahati: Government Railway Police (GRP) has seized two white Himalayan porcupines from the clutches of wildlife traffickers, who travelled in a train from Dharmanagar in Tripura and were bound for Kolkata.
Three persons who were ferrying these rare species were nabbed by the GRP personnel from a compartment of the Kanchanjunga Express late on Sunday night at the Burdwan railway station in West Bengal.
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The arrested persons have been identified as Ganesh Shaw, Pintu Kumar and Tarun Kumar Ghosh, said a GRP official.
Tarun Ghosh is a contractual employee with the railways who’s from Kolkata, Shaw is a resident of Giridih in Jharkhand, while Kumar is a resident of Delhi, the official said.
The GRP officials have handed over the porcupines to the local forest range office.
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Forest officer Kajal Biswas told reporters on Monday that veterinary officials and forest department officials are currently examining the health condition of the two rescued animals.
“They seem to be in good health. After the check-up, our officials will decide about their next destination,” Biswas said.
Initial interrogation has revealed that the porcupines were being taken to Sealdah in Kolkata, where they were supposed to handed over to another person.
The arrested persons have confided that they got the consignment from Dharmanagar in Tripura and boarded the Kanchanjunga Express with the intention of bringing them to Kolkata, said the GRP official.
In April this year, Bengal forest officials found four kangaroos in the Gajoldoba area of Jalpaiguri. Two more kangaroos – one dead, the other injured – were found in the Dabgram forest range.
The Bengal Forest officials also rescued four monkeys smuggled from Indonesia from a Siliguri-bound bus around that time.
Assam Forest officials said Myanmar has been the source of the most rare species of wildlife smuggled into the Northeast and then to the “mainland” with northern West Bengal becoming a hub of this illegal trade.
Most people arrested in Assam while transporting such animals said they were paid to deliver their consignments in West Bengal, specifically the Alipurduar-Cooch Behar-Jalpaiguri-Siliguri belt.