Four persons, including a student leader, of a gang were arrested by district forest officials on Tuesday allegedly for running a racket to capture and sell endangered species like chameleons.
The arrested student leader, a key member of the gang, is contesting for the post of president in one of the leading colleges of Rourkela city in the ensuing college union election.
Sources said district forest officials had received a tipoff recently regarding operation of a racket in the district, which has been engaged in illegal trade of endangered species like chameleons on a regular basis. Acting on the information, a team of forest officials under the leadership of Assistant Conservator of Forest (ACF), Panposh range, PK Dhal conducted a raid and arrested the four persons. They also seized two chameleons from them, which they had kept for selling to a buyer outside the State.
The arrested were identified as John Gudia (21), Rajendra Gaud (20), Umesh Chandra Pasayat (52) and Sinu Pasayat (22). John is a key member of the racket.
According to forest officials, during investigation, it was revealed that the racket also opened a website recently in a bid to attract foreign buyers.
“They have been operating a website in the name of www.greenchilli.com and John Gudia, who has been arrested by us, has been mentioned as the contact person in the website,” said ACF Dhal. Since the chameleons are considered as endangered species, the arrested persons have been booked under Wild life Schedule II. Besides forwarding these four persons, we are further investigating into their website account to know details of their clients, Dhal added.
Meanwhile, the arrested persons confessed that they were involved in capturing and trading chameleons since last couple of years. They said they had been capturing the chameleons from different locations of the State like Baleswar, Raj Nagar and Paradip. They sold a chameleon at a price as high as Rs1 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh, sources said. They claimed that the chameleons have a medicinal value for which different buyers are interested.