Traffickers use govt portal to evade authorities while smuggling animals
Enforcement agencies have detected at least three to four cases in the last couple of months in which fake applications were submitted on the Parivesh portal to make illegal consignments appear legal
Wildlife traffickers in India are now taking the help of the government’s Parivesh portal in a bid to hoodwink the enforcement agencies while trying to transfer smuggled exotic animals from one state to another, officials aware of the matter said.
Enforcement agencies have detected at least three to four cases in the last couple of months in which fake applications have been submitted on the government portal to make the illegal consignments appear legal if it gets intercepted while being transferred.
“We have detected at least three to four such cases in which fake applications have been uploaded on the government’s portal, seeking transfer of some exotic animal species from one state to another,” said Agni Mitra, deputy director of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau’s eastern region.
In June 2020 the centre had issued an advisory on how one may apply through the centre’s Parivesh portal to import exotic species, declare their existing stocks and transfer them from one state to another to streamline the process.
A senior official in know-how of the matter said that some traffickers have been found to be taking advantage of this portal.
“The modus operandi is somewhat like this. A person in Karnataka, who needs an exotic snake, would apply through the portal that he has a snake (even though he doesn’t) and wants to gift it to a person in Mizoram. Meanwhile, the latter smuggles in the exotic snake through the international border. Just one or two days later or may be on the same day, the person in Mizoram would apply on the portal that he can’t keep the snakes and want to transfer it to another person in Karnataka,” said the official.
If the consignment is intercepted by the enforcement agencies in any state on its transit, the traffickers try to produce fake documents and claim that it was just a transfer, which has been moved through the Parivesh portal.
The issue was also flagged at a sympoisum on wildlife crimes organised by the Mizoram state legal services authority in collaboration with the Mizoram police and the state’s environmemnt and forest department and customs division at Aizawal earlier this week.
“One such case which was detected a few months back, the trafficker claimed that he had three mangrove snakes and mentioned his residential address in Bangalore, the state was mentioned as Rajasthan and the village was mentioned as Kanpur,” said the official.
The consignment was seized in Manipur. Mangrove snakes are mildly poisonous and are found in south-east Asian countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines among others.
“Recently we seized a consignment in Mizoram’s Saiha district, which shares its borders with Myanmar. The application was uploaded on the Parivesh portal just 24 hours before. Most of the information required, such as NOC from the state’s chief wildlife warden and clearance of the DGFT, to fill up the application were not there and the person had only written ‘not applicable’,” said L Sailo, chief wildlife warden of Mizoram.
Officials said that nearly all the consignments were being routed through north-east India, with Mizoram in particular. Several consignments of exotic animals trafficked through the Indo-Myanmar border has been intercepted in Mizoram and Assam.
In May this year the Mizoram police seized one of the biggest such consignments in recent times in which around 468 exotic animals, including snakes, sloths, beavers and pottos were rescued. Earlier in April, Kangaroos were rescued from West Bengal.
“Wild animals may be carrying pathogens and illegal trade in such exotic animals may lead to several diseases, which may jump from animal to animal or animals to humans. Some of the animals if they get a chance to escape may establish themselves and become invasive threatening the local biodiversity,” said Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, chief executive officer of Aranyak, a Guwahati-based NGO dealing with wildlife.