Pramesh Jain
In a joint operation Officials of forest Mobile squad along with the city police on Sunday raided the house of a software engineer in JP Nagar and recovered a huge collection of ornamental articles made of wildlife and marine.
Based on a tip off from a team of WCCB officials, a team led by Gangadhar GA,Deputy Conservator of Forest,(forest mobile squad,Bengaluru) raided the house of Pawan Kumar, 34, situated in KSRTC layout in JP Nagar and seized the articles.
The accused has been identified as,Pawan Kumar is a software engineer working for a reputed IT,(IBM)company in the city.
During the raid we have seized ornamental articles in the form of trophies includes,deer skin, deer horns,tiger nails,necklaces,rosaries,walking sticks,bangles,rings,bracelets,eads,coombs, carrom strikers,beads and dice made out of elephant tusks,various types of conches, porcupine quills,walking stick made of camel bone,tortoise shells,kangaroo pelt,corals,sea horse and shark teeths found during the raid.
During investigation Pawan Kumar told the officials that it is his hobby to collect the rare artifacts and had purchased many of them online shopping and some from other countries .
He also claimed that some of the artifacts and trophies he got were from his grandfather Chikkaraja,who worked with the Mysore Royal family,while others he purchased during his visit to UK,US and Australia.
Even though the accused claimed that he had bills for the purchase bills,the officials said that he had not declared and hence culpable under wildlife act.
The accused has been booked under various sections of the wildlife act and remanded to judicial custody .
The raid was carried out based on the inputs provided by WCCB officials who carried out similar operations in Kerala earlier.
The accused had formed a whatsapp group from the other accused who had similar wildlife article collections and are communicating for trade and purchase said senior official.
