Four rhino poachers fall in Assam police net

A week after poachers gunned down the fourth one-horned rhino within a year inside the Kaziranga National Park, police have nabbed four persons, one of whom is believed to be the kingpin of a poaching racket. While three of them fell into a well-laid police trap at Diphu, headquarters of Karbi Anglong district, on Tuesday night, the fourth person was picked up by the police from Nagaon district on Wednesday.

It was on a tip-off that Karbi Anglong Additional Superintendent of Police Nitya Nanda Goswami established a telephonic contact with Nurul, who was on the look-out for customers for ivory in the district and in Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland. “We managed to come into contact with Nurul by putting a decoy as a prospective buyer of ivory. Nurul asked the decoy to finalise the deal in Hotel Hillview at Diphu,” said Goswami. The decoy checked into the hotel. Nurul and two of his accomplices turned up seven hours after the appointed time. “As he showed the decoy customer five pieces of ivory, we surrounded the hotel and barged in to catch them red-handed with the ivory,” Goswami said.

“We have definite inputs that Nurul is not merely an ivory trader but also one of the kingpins of rhino poaching in Kaziranga. Of the two others, one has been identified as Goupu Paite (30) of Dimapur and and the other is Khamkhan Soun (48) from Rongbongwe in Karbi Anglong,” he said. The fourth person, Safiqul Islam (42), is Nurul’s elder brother and has been picked up by the police from Nagaon district.

Though Nurul and his gang are yet to confess their involvement in rhino poaching, the police was sure that he was one of the members of the gang that killed a rhino inside Kaziranga National Park on February 5. “Nurul and his associates are part of a larger network that smuggles out rhino horns, ivory and other animal parts through Dimapur,” he added.