Police recover 190 turtles, two arrested

HALDWANI: A joint team of special operation group (SOG) and local police arrested two people and recovered 190 turtles from their possession in US Nagar district, officials said on Tuesday.

Kamlesh Bhatt, SOG in charge of Udham Singh Nagar, said, “We had received a tip-off that some people were coming to Uttarakhand via Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh for a big deal. A joint team of SOG and local police was constituted to arrest two wildlife smugglers.

This joint team started checking vehicles coming from Baheri side at around 1:30 am on Monday night at the inter-state border near Pulbhatta in US Nagar district.”

Bhatt said when some people in a car coming from Baheri side saw police, they tried to turn the vehicle back. “Police team swung into action and caught the two people in the car. When we searched the car, we found three jute bags with 190 turtles in them,” he said.

Bhatt said accused have been identified as Prahlad Mandal from Dineshpur and Vishnu Dey from Transit Camp in the district. He said they recovered a mobile phone and ₹5,000 cash from Mandal and a mobile phone and ₹2,000 from Dey.

Bhatt said it was revealed during the preliminary investigation that they had bought these turtles for ₹1 lakh from Etawah in UP. “We are further investigating whether this is part some of big wildlife smuggling racket”, he said.

The turtles have been handed over to the forest department and will be released in their natural habitat, he added.

This is not the first such incident in the state in last one year. In September, forest officials rescued 53 turtles in Udham Singh Nagar district and arrested two people. In March, police rescued 16 turtles in the Kichha area of US Nagar and arrested two women from whom they were recovered. In December last year police recovered 40 turtles from a man in US Nagar.