SILCHAR: The Assam Police in Dholai in an operation in Lailapur in Assam's Cachar district was successful in seizing two rare species of chimpanzees. The police said in a statement that the chimpanzees were probably smuggled into Assam through Mizoram from Indonesia or Myanmar.
The smugglers tried to smuggle the chimpanzees taking Mizoram and Assam as the route. These northeastern states are just the transit sources of smuggling these exotic animals to other parts of the country to be kept in private zoos or as pets in powerful individuals' homes, said an official of the forest department.
Meanwhile, the police have launched an investigation into this whole smuggling affair that is rampantly growing taking the northeast as the route.
Just a few days back, on Sunday, the Mizoram Police in the Assam-Mizoram border district of Kolasib was successful in seizing 19 species of exotic animals which included six gibbons, ten turtles, and three small monkeys.
The Mizoram Police was also successful in arresting four persons who were engaged in this smuggling of exotic animals and all of them hailed from the Cachar and Karimganj districts of Assam.
"Mizoram or Manipur is just the transit route. Assam is not the destination either. The exotic wildlife is being smuggled somewhere outside the northeast, perhaps for keeping them as pets or in some secret zoos," a source of the forest department said in a statement.
It is noteworthy that a voluntary disclosure scheme came in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a zoonotic disease that is likely to have jumped to humans from an intermediary wildlife host species was announced by the Central Government in June 2020 which urged the Indians to disclose if they possess any exotic or rare species of animals in their homes that they think are displaced from their native region and surprisingly enough more than 32000 Indians by February 2021 voluntarily disclosed that they possess exotic animals in their homes.
Another mind-boggling data is that the worldwide business of exotic animals is north of 19 billion dollars and India serves as the transit route of most of these exotic animals which are smuggled from Southeast Asian nations like Thailand and Indonesia through India to other parts of the world.
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