Vadodara: The forest department busted an ivory trading racket in Mahisagar district and arrested four persons. The deal was to be done by the accused in Balasinor on Aug 9. Forest officials said that they had received information from the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) about some persons trying to sell ivory.
“We then set a trap to lure the people involved in the trade. A decoy customer was sent and a deal was fixed at Rs 20 lakh for the ivory tusks on Aug 9. We had kept our teams ready to nab the accused red-handed, but they called off the deal at the last moment,” a forest official said.
The forest department then raided the residence of one Idris Sheikh who was allegedly involved in the deal. He told them that he had kept the ivory at his relative Sultan Sheikh’s house. The forest officials then reached Sheikh’s house where his wife was present.
“Sheikh stays in Dubai and he was executing the deal from there. We seized four ivory tusks from his home,” the official added. Sheikh’s wife told the forest officials that the tusks have been in their family for generations and they wanted to sell them to earn some money.
The forest department arrested four persons while Sheikh is yet to be nabbed as he is abroad. Those arrested were later released on bail. The special operations group (SOG) in Vadodara had also seized two elephant tusks from the Yakutpura area of the city and arrested two men, Irfan Sheikh and Azhar Pathan, on July 10.
The tusks, each four feet long, were valued in millions of rupees in the black market. The police said that a man from Bihar gave them the tusks some time ago for selling them off. The accused were promised 20% commission on the deal.
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