Earlier this year, you helped in the rescue of live freshwater turtles in Uttar Pradesh. What happened?
The plains of the Ganges river in Uttar Pradesh are frequented by poachers who catch turtles and sell them for their meat. Some families have traditionally made their livelihood this way for centuries. We have been working on such cases for six or seven years, and have found a concentration of this trade at an organised-crime level. In this case, the traffickers were flower sellers who brought flowers from the market in Kolkata to Uttar Pradesh via a night train. They would sell their flowers in the morning, but on their return to Kolkata they were bringing three or four bags full of turtles back with them.
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How many turtles were being trafficked?
It was about 40 kilograms of turtles in each bag – so up to 160 kg per person. We started intercepting the suspects’ cellphone calls. One trader had a flower shop but at the back of his house was a big pond where he used to keep the turtles. We recovered 400 kg of live turtles from there.
What happened after you recovered the turtles?
After we seized the first haul of turtles, another phone intercept revealed that a crime kingpin was sending even more to Kolkata in trucks. We wanted to strike when they were about to be loaded into a truck, so we waited for a couple of nights in cold fog, thinking we would get lucky in the middle of the night. An arrest is always a tense moment: these people sometimes carry weapons. When we did swoop, one suspect fled, taking advantage of the darkness and terrain. He is still wanted in the case. But in total, we recovered over 4 tonnes of live turtles. It was very satisfying.
How serious is the problem of wildlife crime in India?
It’s a big problem. There’s a sizeable illegal trade in India in all sorts of wildlife. The biggest trade is in birds, but nobody seems to care about that. In every city in India you will find a bird market – where all the illegal birds are bought and sold.
Does the Special Task Force you are part of only deal with wildlife crime?
No, if there is a heinous murder in the city, for example, me or my team will visit the scene of the crime with local police. We don’t shape the investigation – our sole aim is to work out the facts of a case: who did it? We collect evidence and advise other investigators.
But wildlife crime is your team’s focus?
Yes. Wildlife is my responsibility, but it’s my passion also. I’m a pet lover and while growing up there wasn’t a single day that we didn’t have pets at home. Whenever one of our dogs grew older, my dad would get a puppy.
Is there a case you were involved in that you are most proud of?
That was in 2007, when we recovered three tiger skins, 75 kg of tiger bones and other contraband, along with the poachers, traffickers, traders, cash and some of the poaching equipment – all in one go. This is apparently the only case in India where all these things were seized at once.
How did you track down the group involved in the tiger trade?
We had been bugging people connected to the main suspect, Shabbir Hasan Qureshi, for three or four months. We identified a group of suspects travelling from a place called Katni, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. It’s on the edge of a vast area of jungle where some tiger reserves are situated. We guessed they had taken a train after comparing information from cellphone interceptions and location data associated with a phone number to train timetables. We got to their destination before them and I told my officers to let the traders enter the building they were travelling to.
Did you arrest them there and then?
After an hour or so we entered the premises. We found Qureshi, his two sons and several others. They had one of the skins on display. It was an enormous tiger. There were two more tiger skins and a huge amount of bones. We asked them to arrange the bones in the shape of a tiger from jaw to tail. They were so expert that they made three tigers.
Of the 16 people we arrested, all were given the maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
What other evidence do you gather from cellphones?
Wildlife criminals have a tendency to take photographs of the contraband that they will send via email or WhatsApp to the trader, so that they can bid for it. Incredibly, from the tigers to the turtle cases, we find pictures stored in their cellphones.
Have any of your targets ever slipped through the net?
There is one example. Bordering Nepal there is a world famous tiger reserve, Dudhwa National Park. Because the river here changes its flow every year after heavy rainfall, the area becomes inaccessible for months. The local people in Pilibhit have techniques to cross it. Poachers collude with them and get them to bait tigers. They leave out a goat with poison in the armpit and wait for the tiger to eat it. There is one criminal who is trying to get to Nepal with tiger skin and bones. He knows we cannot reach him because of the difficult terrain – we don’t have any helicopters or facilities like that in that area.
How difficult is that for you as an investigator?
Because the border with Nepal is completely porous, we have trouble in these areas. It’s a challenge that motivates me to come up with new plans to nab this person.
What angers you most about the mistreatment of wildlife you have encountered?
The killing of pangolins, for their valuable scales, is very common in India. It mostly occurs in the central part of the country where there is dense forest. What many do after killing a pangolin is burn it, which makes the scales easy to remove. But fire causes the scales to lose their shine. We had one telephone intercept in which a person was suggesting to a poacher that it is not necessary to burn the pangolin, you just pour boiling water on it while it is still alive. Then the scales will come out easily. That was so painful to hear.
Is your job emotionally demanding?
“Arranging the bones in the shape of a tiger from jaw to tail, they made three tigers”
I cannot tolerate any cruelty to animals and my blood boils when I see what these people do. Wildlife crime is the only police work in my career that rarely gives any pleasure; in 99.9 per cent of cases, when you recover contraband the animal is already dead. It is a loss not only to our ecosystem, but it also feels like a personal loss to me.
What is the best way to tackle wildlife trade?
The important thing is to break the connections between poacher, trafficker and trader. It is a mistake to think that, say, rabbits being killed in the forest is not very important. The same set of people might one day kill a tiger and transport contraband through the same linkages. And my team has traced the bird and pangolin trade from central India to Myanmar, crossing whole countries and thousands of kilometres. That is concerning to us.
Do you think you are having a positive impact, ultimately?
It is a heartening thing that there has been an increase in the wild tiger population recently – although I am not claiming any personal contribution to it. Many other agencies, not only us, have done valuable work in this field. Collectively, we are having an impact on wildlife crime. I have no doubt.
Profile
Aravind Chaturvedi is an Additional Superintendent of Police for the Special Task Force in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, where he focuses on wildlife crime
This article appeared in print under the headline “India’s wildlife avenger”
