BHOPAL: Three key members of an alleged international poaching syndicate, which was involved in poaching about 20 tigers in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh in 2012 and 2013, were arrested from
Katni district of Madhya Pradesh on Monday.
The arrested were identified as Tilia (25), his brother Tyohari (35) and Rocky (38), all hailing from the gypsy Pardhi community. The three men were wanted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for poaching tigers particularly in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra between October 2012 and May 2013. The three poachers were arrested by a team of MP forest department’s special task force (STF) led by senior Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer RP Singh.
The STF team was working on a tiger poaching case at Satpura Tiger Reserve (STR), when they got specific inputs about the trio and finally arrested them on Monday. The trio was produced before a special CBI court in Jabalpur, after which the court sent them into transit remand of a CBI team from Mumbai.
The arrest is important as it is likely to help wildlife investigators and the CBI in making inroads into the international tigers poaching racket, forest department sources in Bhopal told The New Indian
Express.