PATNA: The forest department will soon move court seeking remand of four accused, including a doctor-cum-BJP leader, in connection with an elephant ivory (tusk) smuggling racket.
Patna divisional forest officer (DFO) Ruchi Singh on Wednesday said they need to interrogate the four to know from whom they had managed to smuggle the ivory.
A team led by the DFO arrested Dr Jyoti Kumar, his driver Guddu Rai and two mediators – Ravi Ranjan and Bunti Patel – from the premises of a private hospital near Zero Mile in the state capital on Monday.
The doctor, who used to work at the private hospital, is also in-charge district president of the BJP in Vaishali.
The forest officials also recovered 35kg of elephant ivory kept inside a private ward of the hospital on Jyoti’s confession.
Sources said elephant ivory price ranges from 90USD to 600USD per kilogram or even more in the international market.
The ivory was brought to Patna from Hajipur by the doctor in his car.
All the four were forwarded to judicial custody on Tuesday and the doctor’s car was also seized.
It was on the basis of an intelligence input provided by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau that the forest officials laid a trap and arrested the four with ivory.
The DFO said a preliminary offence report, which is similar to an FIR, had been filed at the Patna east range office of the forest department in connection with the recovery.
“Once the range office submits its detailed report in the case, we will move court seeking the remand of the four for interrogation.
We have also seized two cellphones from the possession of the arrested persons,” she said.
The DFO added the ivory would be sent to Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun for forensic investigation.
“The doctor claimed that the ivory was of the elephant owned by him which had died four years back.
However, he failed to produce government-issued licence for owning elephants or a postmortem report.
Even if he had an elephant, the tusks were required to be submitted to the government as per Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972,” the DFO said.