Hunt for rebel turned poacher

Tripura police and forest officials are looking for a surrendered militant, from whose house two elephant tusks worth several lakhs has been recovered recently along with two heads of barking deer.

Police suspects former National Liberation Front (NLFT) of Tripura militant Rathindra Debbarma killed the elephant, whose tusk was recovered from his house in Arjuncobrapara village near the border with Bangladesh on Sunday evening.

Realizing the police was out to get him, the former militant turned poacher fled from the area.

The incident has yet again established that militant groups of the state are getting involved in poaching for money and those of them based in Chittagong Hill Tracts could be doing the same.

Earlier few incidents of arrest of NLFT militants for wildlife poaching have been reported and their involvement in illegal trade of elephant tusks have been reported.

Meantime, a decomposed body of an elephant with its head missing was recovered from that area after which police and forest staff started investigating the matter.

“Some marks of bullets fired from a locally made gun was found in the body of the elephant and most probably it was killed for its tusk,” said Dr A K Gupta, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest of Tripura forest department who visited the spot.

“We along with police have launched a massive manhunt to arrest the poachers who had committed this heinous crime.”

He added that in Tripura poaching of elephant is not very common though earlier there has been few incidents of death of elephants in man-animal-conflict in the Teliamura area some years back.

According to the official, the number of elephants in the forest of Tripura is on rise with some 58 elephants including few calves which were recorded last during the census conducted during the year 2009

The Union government has approved two proposed elephant reserves in the Baramura-Devtamura ranges of Tripura.

Elephants have been freely moving in the forest of Tripura and evencrossing over to Bangladesh in search of food.

But after the raising of barbed-wire fencing in the Tripura-Bangladesh border particularly across Khowai and Chittagong Hill Track area their movement have been restricted withing the state leading to food crisis according to experts.