West Bengal: Woman among three held with Royal Bengal Tiger teeth

Acting on a tip off, a special task force from Belakoba forest range, led by wildlife range officer Sanjay Dutta, intercepted a car and arrested these persons.

"Based on specific source inputs, we intercepted a private car at Nagrakata's Chalsa Road area in Jalpaiguri on Tuesday late night and recovered two 4-inch teeth of Royal Bengal Tiger," senior forest officer Sanjay Dutta told IBNS.

"We arrested three persons, who have been identified as Dipak Mahali, Raina Khatun and a student- Shyam Kumar Tanti, for carrying tiger teeth," Dutta said.

Forest officials are suspecting that those tiger teeth were being smuggled into neighbouring country Nepal.

"The arrested are the parts of an international smuggling racket and during preliminary interrogation, we have come to know that there persons brought the tiger teeth from Bhutan and were attempting to traffic those into Nepal," Sanjay Dutta said.

"Such trafficking rackets generally run their business through Whatsapp and smuggle animal remains, including tiger teeth, skin and bones, elephant teeth and pangolin skull, into Nepal via north Bengal and Sikkim," Dutta added.

"These rackets use the land of Nepal to traffic these things into China and they sell those animal remains in Chinese markets," the wildlife ranger said.

Officials of the state forest department said that the arrested persons have been smuggling animals' body parts for last two years.

"We are interrogating these persons to identify others involved in the racket," a senior forest officer said.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)