E Arun
Port Blair, Dec 26: It seems that in Andamans, elephant tusks are pouring down from sky. The CID team has recently busted three cases of Elephant Tusk Smuggling. Although, in the first case the seized materials, turned out to be bones of dead whales but in last two cases the seized materials were later confirmed to be Elephant Tusks.
Highly places sources told Andaman Sheekha that some Karen families in Mayabunder area are actually selling these elephant tusks to agents, who are later selling these Tusks to underground dealers at Port Blair. These underground dealers, who run big businesses in Andaman, later sell these Tusks in Mainland India.
This has already been confessed by an accused of recent Elephant Tusk Smuggling Case.
Sadly neither Police nor the Forest Department are investigating in this issue. It appears that a highly organised gang of poachers are killing feral elephants of Interview Island for these tusks and for a good fortune. But, the Forest Department, as usual, is refusing to accept the facts.
When contacted, Dr.Shashi Kumar, IFS, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) and Chief Wildlife Warden refused to accept that any kind of elephant poaching is going on inside Forest area.
“We can’t say that elephant poaching is going on. Elephants may have died a natural death, like aging or while fighting for the survival etc. The tusks might have been hacked out of the dead Elephants,” Mr. Shashi claimed, adding that “investigations are going on. We are waiting for the final report.”
However, when questioned the PCCF (wildlife) could not give any detail about the number of elephants present in Interview Island. “We don’t have clear report regarding that. We are still working on it,” he said.
However, the PCCF, added another strange angle to this story by saying that the Forest Department also suspect that these elephant tusks might have been brought to Andaman from Mainland. Very strange statement indeed, very hard to digest.
“There are possibilities that these tusks were brought from Mainland or other Countries. We have to interrogate into this matter. However, these arrests show that how proactive we are. Police and forests department are taking swift actions,” he said, knowing fully well that all such cases were busted only by the Police Department and not the Forest Department. Hope someday the investigation of Forest Department will end, hopefully, well before the last elephant of Interview Island is killed by poachers.
