Two wildlife smugglers held in UP’s Kanpur

The special task force (STF) of UP police on Saturday midnight arrested two Jammu and Kashmir residents from Kanpur along with 1,878 turtles meant for smuggling from west UP wet lands to other countries, including China, Malaysia and Hongkong via Bangladesh and Myanmar via West Bengal, said senior police officials here on Sunday.

An STF press note said the smugglers identified as Javed Haider and Mohd Farrukh, residents of Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, were arrested in a joint operation with Wildlife Crime Control Bureau. It further read there is huge demand of calipee (the fatty light-yellow substance found immediately over the lower shell of a turtle) in Bangladesh and some others countries as its flesh and calipee are used for different purposes, including manufacturing of aphrodisiac medicines.

A senior STF official said as many as 29 species of turtles are found in India and out of which 15 species are found in Uttar Pradesh alone. He said turtles of both categories—hard shell and soft shell—are found in wet lands along different rivers including the Ganga, the Gomti, the Ghaghra, the Gandak and its tributaries as well as in canals and ponds in districts like Etawah, Etah, Mainpuri, Auraiya and Farrukhabad.

The official said the recovered turtles were captured by local links of the wildlife smuggling racket in Etawah and Mainpuri and were sold to the smugglers who would hand it over to their aides in West Bengal from where it was being smuggled abroad through Bangladesh and Myanmar.

He said the two arrested smugglers were basically truck drivers who had taken the contract from the wildlife smugglers to transport the turtles from Etawah to West Bengal in return of ₹60,000 a trip. He said the duo was booked under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 after registration an FIR in this connection. They were being further interrogated about others associated with the widespread racket, he added.