Just around 12am, on a periodic patrol inside a shady forest existing within Cachar district along the Assam-Mizoram border, the officers had to stop and deport from their vehicle.
An unconventional stink made it unavoidable for them to continue.
It filled the air, coming in from packed cartons inside a parked vehicle.
What emerged from the site, was totally horrifying and confusing. The team found a red kangaroo, two capuchin monkeys, three Aldabra tortoises and six blue macaws.
This was infamously disclaimed as the Lailapur incident of the North Eastern region.
Interestingly, they were found on Indian soil yet none of these is native to India.
Why does this happen?
Even though a complete ban on wildlife trade has been in place in a country like India that harbors a rich biodiversity of 7-8% encompassing all the recorded species, as per IUCN despite having a mere 2.4% of the world’s land area.
In total, this number accounts for over 45,000 species of plant kingdom and about 91,000 species of Animalia.
This ban and the prescribed punishments are all undertaken under TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce), Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
However, the wildlife smuggling has remained a big business ($23 billion a year) with a registered increase during and after the pandemic.
But it has been recently noticed how there has been an outpouring demand for exotic species in India and the world, as per the Smuggling in India Report 2019-2020.
This report has been drafted and published by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.
Smugglers have begun playing new gimmicks for carrying out this illegal trade. They seem to be taking illicit advantage from gaps existing in the Indian law regarding wildlife regulation in India.
“Since there is a complete ban on trade in Indian species, the interest of the smugglers has shifted to exotic species, which has led to disastrous global consequences”.
The Voluntary Disclosure Scheme 2020, released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC), has aimed to regulate such hidden but burgeoning trade of exotic animals in India, where poaching has become a desperate way of sustenance for many.
It was framed to be an amnesty scheme to declare possession of any exotic species surviving in India and streamline the process involved with the import and development of an inventory containing exotic species listed under CITES.
This possession has to be declared by an Indian within six months of the date of the issue of the advisory with no requirement of any document pertaining to the same.
The scheme extended till March 15, attracted more than 30,000 Indians to apply for this exemption.
How can someone exploit this scheme for negating the very purpose it was created for?
The offender began persuading the Customs Department for release of these animals confined by the forest department.
Consequently, they released a provisional for the release of seized animals on payment of 100% bond value of concerned animals as well as 25% cash deposit of it.
Herein, tweaking the available laws, normally the offender becomes the declarer under the scheme, and files a petition in Court to undertake the custody of seized wild animals.
“When you are saying these are exotic species, it needs to be proven genetically. We finally identified the species by referring to the Zoological Survey of India.”
With no production of any documentation, a criminal proceeding can be filed to ascertain one’s hold of the exotic species under their care.
A similar case came into the light in aforementioned case. But on further investigation, various valuable body parts of wild animals were found like tiger claw, turtle shells from the vehicle, changing the complete story.
The conflicting statements at the time of arrest and in petition cleared the heavy air.
As per the DFO at the time of seizure: “In his statement, the accused said that he was transporting onions from Siliguri to Aizawl where these cartons were handed over to him by a person named Lala who asked him to make the delivery at Guwahati against a payment of Rs 15,000.”
“He had said that he had no idea what these cartons contained.”
This helped the Court anticipate the consequences of handing over custody of these animals or their articles to a person submitting conflicting explanations.
Another loophole, another fight:
It is also worth noting that the country’s Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 does not cover exotic animal species:
“As seized animals do not come under the purview of the Wildlife Protection Act, the detention of the petitioners would not be permissible under it and since the only case registered against the petitioners is under the Wildlife Protection Act”.
Henceforth, the forest department took the fight against illegal wildlife smuggling into India, from its borders and undo the very undue advantage taken through the advisory issued by MOEFCC.
“Most of these consignments carrying exotic species are intercepted in border areas that fall under the jurisdiction of Border Security Force.”
“BSF has to operate in a very open field kind of scenario, where often the accused manages to flee and they are only able to recover the packages.”
“In this particular case, the accused was not arrested for possession of exotic animals. He was booked for smuggling.”
Need for a sync?
The above difficulty has been witnessed for long as the country law does not enlist the exotic animals and hence conviction of the offender becomes time intensive and cumbersome.
While the CITES demand protection of these divided souls in any country, irrespective of the wildlife specie listed in the concerned country.
“This is why Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species needs to be harmonized with Wildlife Protection Act”.
“The bigger problem occurs when two agencies – the Customs and the Forest Department are supposed to act on their own law that overlaps (at times, conflicts) each other.”
It is certainly easy to draft and pass laws with greater support and strategic arrangement. However, it takes a holistic vision to understand, recognize and then root out the lacunas in our system.