(India) Million-rupee racket in tiger skins busted

July 7, 2004

Chennai, July 7 (IANS) :

A nationwide racket in tiger skins has been busted here, say police,

even as this city is believed to be fast emerging as a centre for

animal and bird smuggling.

City police said they had seized from a dealer four tiger skins, two

leopard skins and 42 pairs of tiger's claws, worth Rs.10 million.

The dealer, a man called Kothanda Ramaiah based in Visakhapatnam in

coastal Andhra Pradesh, has been arrested.

Officials say he told police he had bought the skins from tribal

groups in the Narasimhapatnam reserve forest area near Visakhapatnam.

He got the tiger and leopard skins and other exotic wild animals in

exchange for bagfuls of cosmetics.

Cosmetics, he said, were cheap in Chennai. He took cosmetics from

Tamil Nadu, to his village in Andhra Pradesh and exchanged them for

animal skins. He then sold the skins at high prices to exporters.

The city police raids on dealers of exotic animals in Chennai began

in June. On June 21, in a joint operation police and the wildlife

division, along with the NGO People for Animals, raided the Moore

Market area of the city and arrested a dealer and his associates,

recovering exotic birds, among them peacocks and parakeets.

On June 26, in Manali, in the northern outskirts of the city, police

arrested four men with tiger skins and deer antlers.

Intensive interrogation over the week revealed that the tiger skins

and animals were being sourced from Andhra Pradesh coastal forests.

The conduit in Chennai was identified. He was approached in

Visakhapatnam by crime branch inspector Raphael Rajkumar, who acted

as a decoy.

full story:

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" The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people

who get in his way tomorrow. " - Dr. Diane Fossey, Woman in the Mists

(Dr. Fossey was killed by someone who killed animals yesterday.)

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