Thane crime branch unit 3 has arrested a person for possessing a leopard skin worth Rs 7 lakh. Two persons were arrested from Kalyan station.
Thane crime branch unit 3 has arrested a person for possessing a leopard skin worth Rs 7 lakh. Two persons were arrested from Kalyan station. They were planning to sell the skin to a customer in Kalyan-Ulhasnagar.
Acting on a tip-off that some people were planning to sell leopard skin in Kalyan, four officials from Thane crime branch unit 3, along with Kalyan police, laid a trap to arrest the culprits. “We arrested them at a spot near Kalyan station. We checked their bags and found leopard skin inside. We arrested the accused. During interrogation, it came to the fore that these people are regulars in the business of selling animal skin. This time, they had come to sell the skin to a businessman in Kalyan-Ulhasnagar,” said PRO Gajanan Kabdule.
He added, “We have recovered a gun from them. The accused have been identified as Mralidhar Jagkar and Raghunath Shelar. There is one more middle man who provided the skin to these men. We are on the lookout for him. We have registered a case under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 9, 39, 48 (a), 29 (B), 50 and 51.”
In 2014, Thane police has seized tiger skin from two persons in the city’s Teen Hath Naka area. That skin was worth Rs 7 lakh in the Indian market and at least Rs 20 lakh in the international market. The skin had been brought from Nashik.
