NEWINDPRESS (Chennai, India) 28 August 03 Rs 10 lakh worth star turtles bound for Singapore seized in pre-dawn swoop
Photo: The rescued star tortoises that were kept at the Chief Wild Life Warden’s office in Velacherry on Wednesday. (http://www.newindpress.com/Images/aug03/28tn12.jpg)
Chennai: In a pre-dawn operation by the Forest Department officials on Wednesday, two persons attempting to smuggle 950 star tortoises (Geochelone eleganes) in their bags were taken into custody and the tortoises rescued.
The value of seizure in the international market is put at around Rs 10 lakh.
Talking to reporters here, Chief Wild Life Warden, K S S V P Reddy said the officials, acting on a tip-off from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, apprehended Mohammed Ayiah and Mohammed Arithu trying to smuggle the tortoises to Singapore.
Reddy said the accused had apparently brought the tortoises by rail to Chennai from Andhra Pradesh and were planning to send them off through the Chennai airport.
When the forest officials rushed to the airport here at about 2 a.m., they found that the accused had managed to pass through the security check-in and even boarded a Singapore-bound flight. The tortoises were stacked in three of their bags.
Various sections of the Wild Life Act were slapped on the smugglers. Reddy told reporters that such tortoises are a delicacy in many hotels in South East Asian countries, mainly Singapore and Malaysia, and India is one of the main sources for these reptiles.
There is a spurt in the smuggling of star tortoises from Chennai, he said. In the past one month as many as 2,100 star turtles had been seized and four persons arrested in this regard.
The department is taking necessary action, including alerting the Andhra Pradesh forest department officials and intensifying checks at transit points that include railway stations and airports, to curb the menace, he added.
http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IET20030827124611&Title=Southern News - Tamil Nadu&rLink=0
BBC (London, UK) 27 August 03 Rare tortoises escape hand-luggage hell
Vigilant Indian airport officials have found nearly 1,000 endangered star tortoises crammed into three pieces of hand luggage aboard a flight to Singapore.
Star tortoises are a delicacy in the far-east
They believe the 960 rare animals were destined to become delicacies served up by restaurants in the far-east.
Airport officials acting on a tip-off discovered the tortoises in the overhead locker of a plane that was about to leave the southern Indian city of Madras.
Two Indian men were arrested for attempting to smuggle the rare species out of the country.
According to wildlife warden K. Reddy, the men confessed to having caught the tortoises in forests in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
Mr Reddy said the tortoises could be expected to fetch a million Indian rupees, or roughly 22,000 US dollars, amongst far-eastern consumers who value them as culinary delicacies and household pets.
He said over 2,100 star tortoises had been seized at Madras airport during the previous month and four arrests had been made.
The animals, which are indigenous to India, are protected by international conventions against hunting endangered species.
They get their name from the star-like patterns on the pyramidal humps along their shell.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3185773.stm
