The CBI has busted an illegal wildlife inter-State trade racket and arrested three persons with 26 tiger and leopard claws. “A case was registered against three accused and unknown others. It was alleged that a network of inter-state gangs was involved in illegal trafficking of wildlife material.
CBI in association with the official of Wildlife Crime Control Bureau conducted searches at Delhi and recovered 19 numbers of leopard/tiger claws from the said accused,” the CBI said in a statement. Further searches were conducted at certain places in Jaipur which resulted in the recovery of 7seven more tiger/leopard claws, it further said. The CBI acted on an input that Sunny, a resident of Vikaspuri in Delhi, is in the possession of a large number of tiger and leopard claws which he was going to sell to dealers, officials said.
The central agency was also intimated about his other gang members who were coming from Jaipur to help him strike the deal with wildlife smugglers, they said.
A team of officials along with experts from the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) and independent witnesses were sent to lay an ambush on the suspects based on the basis of source information, they said. Sources said the claws are used in Chinese traditional medicine and some 'tantrik' (occult) rituals within the country, making them extremely valuable in the black market.
The team had maintained intense surveillance since July 14 through its source on every movement of Pamjeet Singh alias Sunny and his accomplices — Ashok Parekh and Pintal Patel — who were coming from Jaipur, they said.
The source informed them that Parekh and Patel will reach Delhi by 10 PM on July 14 and the trio was planning to sell the contraband to an unknown dealer the next day near a hotel in Karol Bagh. After visual confirmation from the source, the CBI nabbed the trio with the claws which were hidden in their clothes. The WCCB expert also confirmed the four claws to be of tiger while remaining were that of leopards, they said. The accused were brought to the CBI headquarters where the seizure memo was prepared and they were taken into custody.
The agency then started a subsequent operation to arrest remaining members of the wildlife trading ring conducting searches at multiple locations in Delhi and Jaipur in which seven more claws were recovered from Jaipur, they added.
The arrested accused were produced before the Competent Court at Delhi and remanded to the CBI custody