Port Blair, June 20: As many as eight Myanmarese Poachers have been arrested from deep forest areas of Little Andaman Island of Andaman and Nicobar Island Chain in last three weeks during ongoing massive combing operation.
As per villagers, yesterday two poachers were apprehended from Harminder Bay area, when a police patrolling team, saw them walking on the main road, wearing black coat. On suspicion when police team, headed by SHO Hut Bay, Sub Inspector Saravanan came close, they were identified as Myanmar National and were later arrested.
Earlier on June 18 three other poachers were arrested from Junction Creek area of Little Andaman. Earlier last week three more poachers were apprehended from remote Jungle of Little Andaman Island.
Sources in Police Department said that it is expected that nearly 13 to 14 more poachers might be present inside the Jungle of Little Andaman area, where the Police and IRBn teams are presently conducting massive combing operation.
North Andaman Islands are very close to Myanmar and often taking advantage of this, poachers sneak inside North Andaman Islands to extract timber and collect sea cucumber, illegally.
However, presence of foreign poachers so deep inside Andaman Group of Islands raise several question over surveillance as well as invader detection capability of Andaman and Nicobar Command and Andaman and Nicobar Coast Guard region, especially when Chinese forces believed to have built a listening Centre as well as an airfield in Myanmar’s Coco Island, which is very close to North Andaman Islands.
