Two exotic animals seized in Assam

Silchar, Sep 27 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Cachar district police in Assam seized two rare species of chimpanzees on Tuesday which were probably smuggled into Assam either from Indonesia or Myanmar through Mizoram, an official said.

Police claimed that the Mizoram-Assam route was used by the miscreants to smuggle exotic animals somewhere outside the northeast.

Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Cachar, Tejas Mariswamy told IANS, "Any route which connects the international border becomes the conventional place for smuggling exotic animals and so is the Aizawl-Silchar route."

He said that the animals were seized by the police and handed over to the forest officials for safe custody.

Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police, Cachar district, Numal Mahato said, "The consignment was coming from Mizoram and we have recovered them from Lailapur check gate of the inter-state border. Later, the health examination of the chimpanzees was performed by the vets."

He further said that chimpanzees may belong to the Orangutan species which are native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Myanmar. "We have information that each smuggled species may be sold nearly for Rs 40 crores."

It has been learned that the smugglers left the bags with animals near roads while seeing security personnel in the Assam-Mizoram check post.

Notably, a couple of days back in the Assam-Mizoram border district of Kolasib, police seized 19 species of exotic animals which included six gibbons, ten turtles, and three small monkeys.

Source: IANS