10 kg Of Elephant Tusks Seized In West Bengal, Two Arrested

KOLKATA: Six pieces of ivory, weighing about 10 kg, were seized from two people arrested in West Bengal, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence said in a statement today. The pair was caught near the Tenzing Norgey bus stand in Siliguri and six pieces of ivory collectively weighing 9.9 kg were recovered from them last night, it said.

"Preliminary analysis of the seized tusk indicates that the elephants have been poached very recently," the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence or DRI said.

During interrogation, the two men revealed that the ivory was smuggled from Nepal through Panitanki border.

This is the third seizure of elephant tusks by the DRI this year in north Bengal and Assam.

The DRI had seized 12.4 kg of ivory at Siliguri on February 15 and another 5.8 kg of ivory in Guwahati on May 26 this year.

It had also seized a number of live exotic birds of foreign-origin smuggled into India from Bangladesh in Kolkata.

In May, the DRI had seized two endangered Hoolock Gibbons and two endangered Palm Civets from Kolkata

The agency had also made a seizure of 214 Indian star tortoise in Kolkata in March this year.

Sections 48 and 49 of India's Wild Life Protection Act, 1972 prohibits trade or commerce of wild animals or animal articles or trophies.

Illegal import of wildlife which is in violation of the Wild Life Protection Act also automatically becomes a violation of the Customs Act.

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Fatal elephant attacks on Rohingya refugees push Bangladesh to act

Young boy becomes latest in series of casualties at Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, which lies on migration route long used by elephants.

Bangaldesh has pledged to step up its response to a series of deadly elephant attacks at a refugee camp housing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees after a 12-year-old boy was trampled to death.

Shamsu Uddin died instantly when an elephant attacked him after he had fallen asleep while guarding paddy fields with friends in Uttar Shilkhali village in the coastal town of Cox’s Bazar.


Three days later, a young girl was critically injured when elephants attacked Nayapara refugee camp, to the south of Cox’s Bazar.

Both attacks occurred outside Kutupalong, temporary home to 700,000 Rohingya refugees. The rising number of fatal elephant attacks – at least a dozen in the six months from October 2017 – tell a wider, tragic story of how deforestation, monsoons and the refugee crisis have left some of the world’s most vulnerable people at the mercy of wild animals.

Crowded together on a bare hillside at the mercy of the approaching rainy season, residents of the sprawling Kutupalong camp – mainly Rohingya muslims who have fled a brutal campaign of violence in Myanmar in August – already live in difficult conditions. But it also sits on several important migration corridors between Myanmar and Bangladesh that elephants have used for centuries.


This year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) began a programme to raise awareness, setting up 56 watchtowers and 30 volunteer elephant response teams to warn residents when elephants enter the camp. As part of the initiative, people are made aware of what they should do if they encounter an elephant.




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