From teenage smuggler to forest watcher: The award-winning tale of Sabu Varghese

He made the switch at 23. Turned out to be dedicated and fearless. He has now won a conservation award. ‘I want to end crime in the Periyar forest,’ he says.

The nerves finally got to him on the last leg of the undercover mission.

For four months, forest watcher Sabu Varghese had been pretending to be someone named Babu, a known ivory trader, in an operation that sought to catch ivory smugglers operating on the borders of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

It was a risk posing as someone so well-known, but Varghese had no choice. In the tight circle of ivory smugglers in south India, a new name would have