Payment notifications for Rs 18 lakh on a mobile left behind by an absconding poacher in Maharashtra and a social media post that led to a parish in Meghalaya were among the crucial clues that helped investigators unravel a key strand of a complex network of poachers and traders — believed to be behind the killing of over 100 tigers across India over the past three years, The Indian Express has learnt. The trail goes back to June 2023 when four alleged poachers from Haryana were arrested with tiger skin and 18 kg of bones near Guwahati. This prompted the Centre's Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) to issue a nationwide red alert. Within four weeks, Sonu Singh, a tiger trader from the Bawaria tribal community in Haryana's Pinjore, was arrested in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli along with ten other associates in connection with the seizure in Assam, leading to the recovery of call details that revealed the network’s pan-India reach. Sonu's father, the late Ranjit Singh Bawaria, was a trusted lieutenant of notorious tiger trader of yore Sansar Chand. Early in 2024, Sonu obtained bail and made “new connections” in Odisha. He had allegedly also entered into a rare pact with a rival poaching gang led by Ajeet Siyalal who hails from the Pardhi tribal community in Madhya Pradesh. At the same time, even as he was on the radar of multiple enforcement agencies, Sonu volunteered as an informer - possibly, sources said, to deflect attention from himself and take out competitors. Sonu was finally arrested on January 28 this year in Maharashtra and handed over to the Madhya Pradesh Forest department. But it was the arrest of Ajeet, along with his wife and mother, from a forest hutment in Chandrapur three days earlier that became a turning point, sources said. The big break While Ajeet's three sons managed to escape, one of them left a mobile phone with multiple payment notifications from his bank totalling Rs 18 lakh. “Instantly, the investigators knew they were onto something big,” said sources. This clue led to Shillong, along with a passport photograph that investigators had obtained of a man identified as Lalneisung. “The team made no headway until the suspect was traced to his daughter’s social media posts. Lalneisung’s daughter did not use her real name for the account. Scanning through her posts, however, investigators found photographs indicating that she belonged to a Christian family,” sources said. The next step was to approach various churches of Shillong. “The perseverance bore fruit when a pastor volunteered information. It turned out that Lalneisung lived in Shillong’s Happy Town, a sensitive non-Khasi neighbourhood dominated by non-local residents. The operation was conducted swiftly and Lalneisung, who retired from the Army’s Assam Regiment in 2015, did not resist arrest (on January 30),” sources said. Lalneisung's interrogation, subsequently, led to the arrest of Ning San Lun - an Indian passport holder with her family in Myanmar - from Shillong on February 7. From Lun's phone, investigators allegedly recovered more than 500 photos of wildlife contraband, including tiger skin and bone. In some photos, sources said, “she was seen being assisted” by her husband Kap Liang Mung, a serving Assam Rifles jawan. He was arrested on March 2 from Manipur, where he was posted. Lalneisung was allegedly the first point of contact in the northeast for poachers and traders carrying tiger parts from other parts of the country. According to investigators, he took the contraband to Lun who allegedly forwarded the consignments through her cousin David, a Myanmar citizen, across the Zokhawthar border of Mizoram on hired cabs to the “kingpins”, two businessmen based in Myanmar’s Tahan, a town 70 km away. The businessmen, in turn, "routed payments through hawala" to Lalneisung who allegedly paid the poachers through bank transfers. All the key arrests Consider the key arrests in ongoing investigations by the forest departments of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and at least three other states, and four central agencies - CBI, DRI, ED and WCCB: Feb 9, 2023: TN forest officials arrested four members of the Bawariya community hailing from Panchkula in Haryana, and two women, with tiger and leopard parts inside the Sathyamangalam tiger reserve. They spoke working Tamil, indicating that they had been camping in the state. Jun 28, 2023: Four alleged poachers hailing from Haryana's Pinjore and another from Samalkha in Panipat were arrested near Guwahati with a nine-foot-long tiger skin from Maharashtra and around 18 kg of tiger bones. Led by Maya Devi Bawaria, the gang allegedly made four visits to Assam to hand over the contraband to two women operators - Rindik Teronpi from Karbi Anglong and Mazuil Lalzuithangi from Shillong - to be smuggled across to Myanmar. Jul 22, 2023: WCCB and Uttarakhand Police caught four residents of Dharchula in Pithoragarh district, allegedly operating in and around the Corbett tiger reserve, with an 11-ft tiger hide and 15 kg of bones. Jul 30, 2023: WCCB and Maharashtra Forest Dept arrested Mishram Jakhad, a former forest guard who became an informer, from Delhi’s Dwarka. He allegedly got a cut of Rs 30,000 for every tiger poached by some poachers hailing from the Bawaria community. Aug 18, 2023: Wanted in multiple cases, tiger poacher and trader Adin Singh alias Kalla Bawaria arrested from Gyaraspur on the Vidisha-Sagar highway by the MP State Tiger Strike Force. Jan 2025: Ajeet's gang, followed by Sonu, held in Maharashtra, leading to the arrest of another alleged link, Lalneisung, in Shillong by Maharashtra Forest officials. Feb 2025: Ning San Lun, an alleged central cog, arrested in Shillong by Maharashtra Forest officials; CBI and WCCB arrested poacher Peer Das with tiger and leopard skins from Kalka in Haryana - Peer Das and an associate allegedly ran a local gang that was also involved in the narcotics trade with Sonu as their link to the Ajeet gang; Looking for Ajeet's absconding sons, MP forest officials seized 1,000 kg of ganja in Dindori; alleged Indian link in Myanmar hawala set-up, Zamkhan Kap, arrested in Aizawl. March 2025: Lun’s husband Kap Liang Mung arrested from Manipur; Suman Devi Bawaria, wanted in the Gadchiroli poaching case of 2023, arrested from Sonipat in Haryana.
