Two Tamil Nadu men held in Assam with smuggled exotic animals

The police and forest personnel in Assam, on Thursday, seized 39 rare exotic animals and birds including chimpanzees, wallabies, and tortoises allegedly smuggled from Myanmar, and arrested two men hailing from Tamil Nadu.

Based on an intelligence tip-off, the exotic animals were seized from two SUVs and intercepted near Rangia town in Kamrup district, about 45 km west of Guwahati.

"Preliminary investigation suggests the animals were being taken from Mizoram to Siliguri in north Bengal. Another team was supposed to accept the animals at Siliguri for further transportation," Sunny Deo Choudhury, the divisional forest officer at North Kamrup division, told DH.

The seized animals included two wallabies (similar to kangaroos), 19 primates, 13 small turtles, three big tortoises, and two exotic birds.

Two persons, Raghu Singh and Karthik, were detained and subsequently arrested. Raghu hails from Thena district, while Karthik is a resident of Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu, Choudhury said.

"Thorough interrogation would divulge details about the source of these exotic animals and birds, the smuggling routes and use of the animals," he said.

The police suspected that the animals were smuggled from Myanmar through the porous stretches of the Indo-Myanmar border in Mizoram’s Champhai district. There is another route through Moreh, a commercial town along the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur.

In July 2020, forest personnel in Assam seized a red Kangaroo, six hyacinth macaws, and two capuchin monkeys from South Africa, after they intercepted a truck near the state's border with Mizoram.