SILCHAR: The Cachar district police seized two rare species of chimpanzees on Tuesday which were probably smuggled into Assam either from Indonesia or Myanmar through Mizoram, an official said. Police claimed that the Mizoram-Assam route was used by the miscreants to smuggle exotic animals somewhere outside the Northeast. Cachar Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Tejas Mariswamy told IANS, "Any route which connects the international border becomes the conventional place for smuggling exotic animals and so is the Aizawl-Silchar route."
He said that the animals were seized by the police and handed over to the forest officials for safe custody.
Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police, Cachar district, Numal Mahato said, "The consignment was coming from Mizoram, and we have recovered them from Lailapur check gate of the inter-state border. Later, the health examination of the chimpanzees was performed by the vets."
He further said that chimpanzees may belong to the Orangutan species which are native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Myanmar. We have information that each smuggled species may be sold nearly for Rs 40 crore." (IANS)
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