Recent arrests indicate the Zomi Revolutionary Army orders rhino horns that are smuggled via Myanmar to China. Sadiq Naqvi investigates Safe haven? Kaziranga National Park is known for its protection of India’s greater one-horned rhinos. Photo: Sadiq Naqvi On a full moon night in early May poachers struck in Agratoli, on the eastern side of India’s famed Kaziranga National Park. Forest guards found the carcass of a greater one-horned rhinoceros with its horn missing on May 9, confirming it to be a case of poaching. Eight automatic rifle bullets were recovered from the spot. More than two months after the incident and several arrests and an encounter killing later, police say they have vital clues which suggest that cadres of the Zomi Revolutionary Army, a nationalist insurgent group with a presence in the Northeast Indian state of Manipur and its border with Myanmar, are a crucial cog in a transnational rhino horn smuggling racket that extends to South East Asia and China via Myanmar. The police have invoked the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act against two of the alleged poachers to ensure a more coordinated investigation, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The May poaching incident in Kaziranga, situated in the Northeast Indian state of Assam, was the first such incident in 13 months. Data shared by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), the country’s apex agency to combat organised wildlife crime, show a drastic decline in wildlife crime and poaching cases. The records show 698 such cases were recorded in the country in 2015. The number fell by less than half to 295 cases in 2019. By mid-June 2020, only 19 wildlife crime cases had been registered in the country, according to incomplete data provided by WCCB in response to a Right to Information query. WCCB did not provide details of specific cases. West Bengal in Eastern India tops the list, with 56 cases in 2019, followed by Uttar Pradesh in northern India with 54 cases. Assam, much smaller in size but home to endangered flora and fauna, recorded 24 cases in 2019. David Siama (left) allegedly shot a Kaziranga rhino in May 2020. He was arrested in June with Biki Thapa and Simon Lakra. Photo: supplied However, poaching syndicates are looking for any window of opportunity, the authorities say. This was borne out on August 8, when another rhino poaching was reported from the banks of the Brahmaputra river in Kohora, the central range of the national park. Situated in Central Assam, the more than 1,100 square kilometres of Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve’s wetlands and forests are a refuge for many species, including India’s “big five” – greater one-horned rhinos, also known as Indian rhinos, Eastern swamp deer, Bengal tigers, buffalos and elephants. The park is known for its protection of rhinos, whose population has risen to more than 2,400 and whose conservation status has changed from endangered to vulnerable since 2008. Around the same time the rhino poaching incident took place in May, police in Karbi Anglong district neighbouring Kaziranga received information about the movement of a heavily armed gang. “We did not know if they were insurgents or poachers, but we launched an operation to nab them,” said a top police official in the district who asked not to be named. Karbi Anglong shares a border with Nagaland, a hilly state in northeast India bordering Myanmar that is known to harbour armed militants. On May 28 this armed group was waylaid by forest guards on patrol in the Daldali Forest Reserve in Karbi Anglong, close to the Assam-Nagaland border. In the encounter, one alleged poacher – Mangboi Paite – was killed and six others managed to escape. In June the six members of the gang who had escaped were arrested. Sophisticated weapons, including four AK series rifles, were seized. “We recovered more than 500 bullets. It shows their intentions,” said the police official. “They had big plans for the monsoon season.” A forest department official said the gang had arrived in the Karbi Anglong district before the Covid-19 lockdown in March. “You need one bullet to kill a rhino. They managed to kill the rhino after three failed attempts in other areas of Kaziranga,” the official said. The rhino was allegedly shot by David Siama, a geography graduate who lives in Churachandpur on the Indo-Myanmar border, according to Ramesh Gogoi, the divisional forest officer in Kaziranga. Siama had trained with the Zomi Revolutionary Army but had quit the organisation midway during his training and before he was officially inducted as a member, Gogoi said. Siama is the brother of Mangboi Paite, who was killed during the gang’s initial encounter with forest guards.