Police in northeast India said Wednesday they had busted an elephant smuggling racket which is suspected of selling nearly 100 animals across the country and to Nepal.
Two elephants, a mother and a calf, were seized when a police team swooped on a truck travelling across the state border from Assam to West Bengal at the weekend.
"The ringleader of the gang was arrested in Guwahati (Assam's main city) and later four other men were also apprehended," P.K. Dutta, police chief of the Assam district of Kokrajhar, told AFP.
He estimated 91 elephants had been smuggled out of the state during the past five years to the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, as well as to Nepal.
A conservation group, the Green Heart Nature Club, provided the tip-off to the police.
The gang are suspected of capturing wild elephants and taming them, before passing them off as offspring of India's many trained elephants. The animals were thought to have been heavily drugged while in transit.
The smuggled elephants are either bought as status symbols by wealthy businessmen or as tourist attractions. Some local news reports suggested an animal can cost up to 90,000 dollars.
Activists say that guards at border checkpoints are often bribed to allow trucks carrying the elephants through.
It is illegal to sell elephants in India and moving them across state borders is strictly regulated.
"The Assam wildlife department is doing very little to stop trafficking of elephants although it is a flourishing business going on for many years now," Bablu Dey, director of the Green Heart Nature Club, said.
Some experts say that many tame elephants are being sold as they are now no longer used by timber merchants where they were previously employed to move heavy materials.
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