By IANS
New Delhi : A Delhi court Saturday sentenced two Tibetans and a Nepalese to five years imprisonment and a fine of Rs.10,000 each for trying to smuggle 45 leopard and 15 otter skins to Nepal in 2005.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Alok Agarwal of Tis Hazari court, awarding the sentences under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, said the sentences would be extended by three months in case of default.
Ten witnesses were examined in the trial that began two-and-a-half years ago.
The Tibetans, Anand Tashi and Lobsang Phuntsok, and a Nepali citizen Jeet Bahadur were caught on April 6, 2005, with the animal skins at the Majnu-Ka-Tila Tibetan settlement in the capital.
During investigation, they disclosed that they were working for a person called Tchhwang Tashi Tsering, a notorious wildlife trader who operates from Nepal.
He paid Puntsok and Bahadur Rs.1,000 each to store the skins, which he had got from another notorious wildlife poacher, Sansar Chand, and take the skins to Nepal. Sansar Chand is now in jail.
Tashi was Tsering’s points man and assigned to conceal the contraband.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probed the case following a Supreme Court order on a petition by Ashok Kumar of the NGO Wildlife Trust of India (WTI).
The NGO had tipped-off police about the illegal consignment. Subsequently, a close watch at Majnu-Ka-Tila by police led to the arrest and seizure of the skins.
The three, while in custody moved four bail applications but all were rejected.The NGO said safe hideouts in Majnu-Ka-Tila settlement were used to store smuggled wildlife derivatives and even to strike business deals by some Tibetans who acted as middlemen in the wildlife trade.
According to Kumar, there are nearly a dozen wildlife cases involving Tibetans, but this was the first such case in which a court has pronounced a sentence. Many more cases are still pending.
Kumar said the seizure was one of the largest in recent years and the conviction would go a long way in dissuading people from wildlife trafficking.
Coincidentally, the seizures were made the same day when the Dalai Lama launched his anti-wildlife trade campaign in conjunction with the Britain-based NGO Care for the Wild International (CWI) and WTI in Delhi.
“For the past two years we have been campaigning among the Tibetans in Majnu-Ka-Tila as well as in other parts of the country to create awareness for conservation and dissuade them from illegal wildlife trade,” said Kumar.