Pangolin scale worth Rs 2 lakh seized in Rongjuli, 4 Meghalaya men arrested

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaAugust 11, 2024

Acting on a tip-off, sleuths of Assam forest department recovered a huge consignment of pangolin scales from a Dhaba at Daranggiri in Assam’s Goalpara district on August 9.

Four persons have been arrested in this connection. They have been identified as Jindas Momin (49), Benarson Momin (45), Kilen Sangma (35) and Cabisto Momin (25). All of them are under Kharkutta police station North Garo Hills of Meghalaya. 

They have been charged with Sections 9, 39, 49(B), 50(1) and 51 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.

They were produced before the court of the chief judicial magistrate of Goalpara on Saturday and remanded to 14-day judicial custody.

“We launched an operation based on our source information that some people from Meghalaya will come to sell off pangolin scale at a dhaba at Rongjuli. Our team noticed that some people are negotiating on the pangolin scale. Our team immediately arrested them and brought to the range office,” said Dharmendra Kumar Das, Consolation Range Officer of Rangjuli ForestRange under Goalpara Forest Division.

“The weight of the scales is around one kilogram and its market value is around Rs 2 lakh in the black market,” Das said.

This is the second seizure of pangolin scale in the Northeast after Mizoram Police seized 98 kg of pangolin scales at a checkpoint in Vairengte, a town in Mizoram’s Kolasib district on March 6, this year.

One person driving a cab from Shillong to Aizawl was arrested in this connection. The driver, identified by the officials as Daniala from Assam’s Cachar district, has allegedly revealed during questioning that he was handed the parcel at a taxi counter at Happy Valley in Meghalaya’s Shillong and was asked to drop it off at another cab counter in Aizawl.

Notably, pangolin scale is replacing rhino horn smuggling in the Northeast, after the police and forest department in Assam intensified security measures to curb poaching of one-horned rhinos.

“We have in recent times been able to stop the poaching of one-horned rhinos and smuggling of its horns, but we have noticed a sudden rise in seizures of pangolins from the region,” a senior official of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) said.

“Pangolins caught dead or alive in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills are being trafficked to China’s Yunnan province via Burma, which shares a 1,600km border with Northeast like Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram,” the official said.

There is a sharp rise in the rescue of smuggled pangolins, proving the existence of a trafficking network using the India-Burma-China route. Smugglers prefer live pangolins, which fetch more money (in lakhs) than the scales (up to Rs 20,000), said the official.

“Tribal people from Garo Hills catch the pangolin during the month of August-September. They catch the pangolins in the guise of collecting minor forest produce,” the official noted.

He also said the traffickers sometimes use Meghalaya to stockpile all consignments, and North Bengal as the transit point for sending consignments to South East Asia via Nepal.

“Smugglers now use interior roads and desire paths (a path created due to erosion caused by human or animal traffic) to transport their consignments from Meghalaya to Assam, especially to Kamrup (Metro), Kamrup and Goalpara districts,” he also said.

Pangolin scales are made of keratin, the same material that makes up fingernails, hair and horn. Pangolin scales, like rhino horn and tiger parts, have been used for preparing traditional medicine in China and several other South East Asian countries.

Enhanced security and an international spotlight on the trafficking of rhinos and tigers have forced smugglers to shift to pangolins.

The Chinese pangolin is enlisted in Schedule-I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and declared a “Vulnerable to Critically Endangered” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The WCCB has of late intensified operations against wildlife smugglers across the Northeast. The intensified drive comes in the wake of the increased smuggling of pangolin scales in the region.

“An offence related to smuggling of pangolins may lead to imprisonment ranging from seven to 10 years in Assam,” the official added.

Though the pangolin is officially a protected species in China, a taste for delicacies like pangolin fetus sustains a booming underground trade.