Sansar Chand
Sansar Chand
Sansar Chand is one of the biggest wildlife criminals in the country. He is a buyer and trader of wildlife articles. He comes from a family of skin traders, which simply carried on with their business even after the trade was declared illegal. His uncles, cousins and other relatives by marriage are involved in the trade.
Sansar keeps his hands clean by not being involved in the actual poaching or transport of wildlife products. Instead, he controls a network of poachers and couriers. This network is powerful and efficient (his wife is a politician). His foot-soldiers are guaranteed legal protection - his own lawyers have flown out of Delhi to defend poachers on many occasions.
He was first arrested for a wildlife case in 1974, when he was about sixteen years old. In Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Andhra Pradesh, arrested poachers or couriers have claimed that they were killing the animals or transporting the skins for Sansar Chand. His telephone numbers have turned up in the diaries of accused in Uttar Pradesh.
Cases:
Among the most important cased against him in the Tis Hazari courts in Delhi are:
a) Case no 10/1: His late mother, Menaka, is a co-accused in this case. The seizure included one tiger skins, 17 leopard skins, 74 otter skins and 30 kg tiger bones.
b) Case no 54/96: Seizure included 1 leopard skin
c) Case no 9/1: The seizure included 2178 jackal skins, 1204 jungle cat skins, 61 fox skins, and various other skins of small animals such as hares. It also included 25,800 snake skins
d) Case no 82/1: The seizure included 28 leopard skins, 5 crocodile skins, 1 tiger skin, 1 tiger cub skin and 46 other skins including mongoose.