Bhubaneswar: Wildlife products, including Himalayan musk deer pods, were seized from a gems store in Bhubaneswar during a joint raid by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC).
The seized articles also include soft corals (Gorgonia species) and a large number of protected sea shells, derivatives of red corals, pangolin scale rings and body parts of monitor lizard valued at around Rs 2 million. These are protected under schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act and prohibited under appendix 1 and 3 of CITES.
Eight persons have been detained in this connection.
“The raid was in continuation of the seizure of protected marine species at Vijayawada in June when the international foundation headquartered in Hague had stumbled upon intelligence on marine wildlife trade between coastal Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Andaman Nicobar and upper Himalayas to Bhubaneswar, with likelihood of trade link between India and South East Asia,” South Asia head of WJC Shekhar Kumar Niraj told TNIE.
The seized articles would be handed over to Wildlife Wing of the state for prosecution, he added.
In June, officials of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, the WJC and the AP Wildlife authorities seized a huge quantity of dead and processed sea fans (soft corals), porcupine quills and 60 varieties of rare sea shells from a trader, S Srinivas Rao, in Vijayawada. He was allegedly smuggling and selling the sea fans, corals and other wildlife items.
