Forest Department personnel on Tuesday took into custody three persons on the charge of smuggling out live mud crabs from the Bhitarkanika National Park water bodies in Kendrapada district. Acting on a tipoff, a wildlife protection squad of the department made a seizure of two quintals of live crabs packed in sacks from a Kolkata-bound bus at Nalitapatia village near the national park boundary, forest officials said.
The arrested persons, bus driver Babuli Mallick and helper Sanjay Kumar Das and crab supplier Ajambila Das, were booked under the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and remanded to judicial custody by a court. The mud crabs recovered from the offenders were later released into the water bodies of Bhitarkanika, said DFO of Bhitarkanika Mangrove (wildlife) Division Kedar Kumar Swain. “We had received definite information about illegal trading and catching of mud crabs. The catch was making its way to Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata and other areas,” he said.