India: Poachers from Arunachal Pradesh are active in the forests of Singhbhum and may have had a nasty role to play in the recent beheading of a 35-year-old tusker.

Forest officials in Chaibasa, the headquarters of West Singhbhum district, 80km from here, have joined the dots between the arrest of six poachers from Keonjhar, Odisha, on December 16 and recovery of a decomposed elephant carcass in Majhgaon block, West Singhbhum, on December 23.

Divisional forest officer (DFO), Chaibasa, Kumar Ashutosh said two of the six arrested in the neighbouring state were from Arunachal and were known to be professional tusker killers.

"The Majhgaon poaching may have taken place much earlier this month, but came to light only last week after foresters followed a stench trail into core area. The giant male - between 35 and 40 years old - was found beheaded. Its tusks had been gouged out," DFO Ashutosh said.

While foresters suspected outside hand in the gruesome killing of the tusker, a similar poaching in Janghira jungles of Keonjhar a month ago helped them zero in on the culprits.

"We sent a team to Odisha and the two Arunachal poachers were grilled yesterday (Thursday). We plan to seek transit remand of all the six poachers so that the Majhgaon case can be solved," the senior forest official said.

Asked why they suspected the role of poachers from outside Jharkhand, the DFO explained that wildlife criminals from Arunachal did not cut tusks, they dug them out.

"To do so, the poachers first need to sever the head (of an elephant) from its body, which was the case in Majhgaon," he added

(Source:The Telegraph)