Ex PM Kritinidhi Bista giving an interview to a national television network at his home, Kathmandu, Nepal, September 2016. Source: Tweet of the interviewer Suman Kharel.
Conservationist Kumar Paudel has filed a petition to Nepal’s Supreme Court based on the premise against a number of government departments that demands them to act on a number of prominent yet overlooked cases of illegal wildlife body parts use. Mr Paudel took action initially after viewing the television interview referred to in the image above.
Mr Paudel quotes in the Press Release: “As part of my current research, I have interviewed more than 150 people serving criminal sentences for illegal trading of wildlife in Nepal. Coincidentally, I was watching a national broadcast of an interview with our former Prime Minister, Kritinidhi Bista. I was shocked to see that he was prominently displaying a tiger pelt as a decorative item in his home.”
WildTiger notes that when American Ian Baker was charged with possession of wildlife body parts (including big cat skins) in Nepal in 2008 he claimed that there were many families among Kathmandu’s elite in possession of tiger skins and other wildlife parts. Baker did not appear in Nepal to face charges and an INTERPOL Red Corner Notice against him was later suspended after he was located and arrested in Athens in 2017. “INTERPOL has expressed dissatisfaction over his prosecution by Kathmandu District Forest Office — a quasi- judicial body,” a senior police officer requesting anonymity said – Read story HERE.
WildTiger will update on the Kumar Paudel petition to the Nepal Supreme Court and we are preparing a report on these issues including the Baker case.
Nakal Bahadur Bal of Makwanpur district, Nepal, was arrested with two leopard skins on 24 December 2016. He was released on bail in a case under judicial consideration and therefore prohibited from public discussion elsewhere. On 8 May 2018 Bal was arrested in Lalitpur, Kathmandu Valley, with a leopard skin and a large quantity of leopard bones (in excess of 5kg).
The existing law has a penalty of two years imprisonment for those involved in trade of the common leopard and its body parts. However, an option to pay a fine of Rs. 28,000 (approximately US$260) to avoid the prison term is also available. According to a leading wildlife crime investigator, Sub – Inspector Birendra Johari of the Nepal Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB), in most cases those arrested in the leopard trade are freed after paying the fine.
Out of the 23 people arrested for leopard parts trade (Nepal) in 2015, only two served the two years prison sentence. WildTiger is currently following up on over 30 leopard body parts seizure cases made since that time. The leopard is not on the Protected Species List in Nepal despite decreasing numbers in many areas. Long delays before court cases are heard, inadequate sentences, minimal bail amounts and lack of investigation emphasis are hampering leopard conservation in South Asia, particularly in India and Nepal.
In a series of tweets, WildTiger’s Pragati Shahi (@greeningplanet) yesterday challenged information in an article by Mongabay with regards to zero poaching claims made by WWF in Nepal.
We’ll be following up this situation but it does raise once again the serious issue of accuracy of information. Conservation strategy and particularly donor support depend on the right information being published. The allocation of resources in the wildlife conservation sector is becoming increasingly controversial and our own research into this issue has revealed some disturbing information. We’ll have more on this when appropriate.
Banke District Forest officials and Banke District Court have done a commendable job in tackling wildlife crime. This is an initial victory and calls for close monitoring so that wildlife criminals doesn’t get away with crimes.
On April 7, 2018, Konchiring Lama (white shirt in image), also known as Kunjok Lama, a noted kingpin tiger trader with strong link with Babariyas (nomadic community in India known for tiger poaching), Nepali transporters ( mostly used to transport tiger parts and products from India to Nepal) and Chinese businesses ( ultimate market for wildlife trade) was arrested in Banke district with pangolin scales. A local resident of Humla, Nepal Lama along with another Nepali was arrested with 1.5 kilograms of pangolin scales with the help of Wildlife Crime Control Bureau of Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police.
On April 23, acting on the charge sheet presented by the District Forest Office Banke, the District Court has remanded the case for further proceedings, and approved the request of the District Forest Office’s to apply maximum punishment for Lama’s alleged involvement not only in pangolin trade but his past engagements in trade of other wildlife species, particularly tigers. The Forest Office had requested for maximum punishment of 15 years of imprisonment and a fine of one million rupees. According to the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act of Nepal, those convicted in wildlife crime of protected species listed in Appendix I of CITES and national list are liable to five to fifteen years of imprisonment or a fine of Rs 500,000 to one million rupees, or both.
The charge sheet submitted by District Forest Office, Banke, reads that Konchiring Lama who was arrested with pangolin scales is found to have been involved in trade of various wildlife in the past, part of organised crime of wildlife and using Nepal as a transit hub for wildlife trade between India and China. The analysis of the documents and information (including Call Link Analysis, CDR, and other documents) submitted by CIB in addition found a picture of tiger hides in Lama’s mobile phone. This all leads, to the CIB’s findings suggesting Lama as a kingpin in the tiger trade and his activities have been under close monitoring for some time now.
Now, after the District Court’s decision to remand an extended custody for Lama and further the process of convicting him of his crime. It may take some time, maybe several months or a year, but good news is that he will be in prison until he gets his final verdict.
This is a good start. There has been increasing concern over the poor investigation, prosecution and convictism of poachers and traffickers in the country. A case in a point is about Sanam Jayakar ( Jagari), a Nepali national connected with Indian poaching community and wildlife trader was arrested with a tiger hide in March last year in Kailali. The investigation from CIB had found his involvement in trade of tiger hides and body parts but the prosecuters and judges involved in this have freed him after paying Rs 50,000 only and serving one air jail-term. Interestingly to note that, the arrest of Jayakar, link with the Lambu Fariyad ( the kingpin tiger poacher and trader from Babariya community ) in India, and the now the arrest of Lama are interlinked. This also shows the network of how tiger trade operated between India and China with Nepal as a transit and sometimes source country.
Wildlife crime has been established as an organised crime, and the turn of events in Nepal in the recent past (either it be about the seizure of critically endangered chimpanzees, pangolin scales coming from African nations and heading towards China), have established the fact. Seizures are taking place, national and international arrests are being made, but when it comes to enforcement actions, convictions and punishments, the concerned bodies often fail to reflect the gravity of the underlying crimes. This results incases like Jayakar’s where a wildlife crime convict gets away with the crime.
We have evidences showing that even after proper investigation, prosecution and conviction of wildlife poachers and traders, the country, comes up short. In some cases it has been found that the prosecutors fail to treat wildlife crime as a serious matter.
Breaking News: Following our earlier report on 4 April, Konchirring Lama has been sentenced to 15 years jail and fine of 1 million rupees (NPR) for wildlife crimes.
WildTiger has republished the article below as we look at the serious issue of lenient sentencing for wildlife crime in south Asia and beyond. Pragati Shahi will be updating soon on the Jagari case in Nepal, first mentioned in our post on Quick comment on arrest of kingpin wildlife trader in Nepal
The recent conviction of Salman Khan (released on bail) in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case by a Jodhpur court might have brought cheers to many wildlife lovers across the country. But in Odisha, wildlife activists and animal lovers do not appear much excited about it as they find that the state is utterly failing to bring the wildlife offenders to the book. They want chief minister Naveen Patnaik to intervene and step up action against poachers.
Lack of conviction of offenders has spurred wildlife criminals to continue to decimate the state’s rich wildlife treasure. Poachers resume hunting after being released.
Sources said as many as 1,269 Asiatic elephants have been recorded dead in Odisha by the forest department in the last 26 years. It is seen that death rate has increased over the decades from an average of 33 per year (1990 to 2000) to an average of 73 per year (2010 to 2016). In most of the death cases, the pachyderms were killed by poachers for tusk.
Surprisingly, as wildlife activists put it, the forest department concealed many poaching cases are attributed the deaths to “unknown cause” or “disease”.
Biswajit Mohanty, secretary of Wildlife Society of Odisha, says most wildlife offences in the state are recorded as “undetected” (UD) cases as the department is clueless about the identity of offenders.
A UD case is converted into an “Offence Register” (OR) case once the identity of the accused is established after investigations. Due to incompetent investigations by untrained forest staff the registration of OR cases is extremely low and in most cases the culprits go unpunished.
“Even in cases where the accused are arrested after wildlife products are seized from them, many go scot-free due to weak prosecution caused by defective chargesheets. Most forest officers who depose as prosecution witness also are unable to stick to their eye witness accounts as recorded in the charge sheets thereby allowing the accused to be released,” says Mr Mohanty.
Poachers resume hunting after being released. Such instances have been observed in many cases in Narsinghpur Range of Athagarh forest division and that is the reason why the conviction rate is low as compared to seizures and arrests.
In December 2014, three leopard skins were seized near in Bangriposi and Similipal in Mayurbhanj district and seven poachers-cum-traders were caught with animal skins. In February 2017, all of them were acquitted by court as the forest department failed to provide the required evidences as there were procedural errors in the interrogation documents.
In May 2015, a man was caught red-handed with a leopard skin at Rangamatia under Similipal reserve forest and he admitted his crime. In January 2016, the accused was acquitted by a court in Baripada due to discrepancies in evidence of official witnesses. In another recent case, a person selling parakeets in Balipatna range of Khurda division was denied bail and sent to jail but in a case of star tortoise sale in Bhubaneswar, the accused got a bail immediately.
Principal chief conservator of forest S.C. Mishra said efforts were being made to for ensuring full-proof investigation of various poaching related cases to hand out punishment to the culprits.
Bollywood superstar Salman Khan was sentenced to five years’ jail by a court in Rajasthan in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case earlier this month. He was granted bail later. Odisha activists are all praise for Rajasthan authorities.
Dr Gourang Rout, awildlife activist, said, “Those who are caught under wildlife crimes are supposed to be jailed as per Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. No leniency should be shown to the wildlife offenders.”
Yet another #wildlife#seizure in Nepal. The Wildlife Crime Control Pillar under the Central Investigation Bureau Of Nepal Police has arrested three people, all locals from Udaypur district with a set of elephant tusk on Tuesday from Lalitpur district. It is important to note that an elephant was found dead without a tusk inside a community forest in Udaypur in September last year. At that time the District Forest officials buried animal without conducting a proper investigation and a DNA test. The irony is that the medical report prepared by the District Forest Office, Udaypur mentioned that the cause of death was not established.
A month before this elephant was found dead inside forest in Udaypur, CIB team had made a big bust where they confiscated two elephant tusks along with a loaded 9mm caliber gun from Makwanpur district, less than 89 kilometer away from the capital Kathmandu.
While the reports of seizures of products made up of elephant hair or ivory were reported in Nepali media at different intervals, it was first time that the elephant poaching incident was reported. All these series of incidents are all part of the bigger picture of illegal wildlife trade and, unfortunately, I have seen very little or no interest at all from the concerned bodies over the current wildlife crime situation in the country.
After a long investigation an illegal wildlife trading kingpin from Nepal has been arrested and is currently in interrogation. We’ll have the full story as soon as appropriate. Investigation is ongoing so the name of the arrested trader is not being made public at this stage. The process though does raise other serious issues including the seemingly light sentence for tiger poacher Sanam Jagari.
Quick comment from Pragati Shahi:
The recent ‘big’ wildlife seizures have established wildlife crime as a transnational organised crime and no longer just an environmental issue for Nepal. The recent seizure of 162 kilograms of pangolin scales from two Chinese, travelling from Congo to China via Kathmandu, is a case in point. The investigators have found the involvement of Chinese along with Nepali and Bangladeshi nationals in illegal wildlife crime of not only pangolins but tiger and leopard’s skins and body parts, among others. The role played by the Wildlife Crime Control Unit of the Central Investigation Bureau in treating wildlife crime as a serious issue is a positive start.
The successful seizures and follow-up investigations gives us a sense of progress being made in combating wildlife crime, while at the same time, the court decision to release Sanam Jagari, a tiger poacher arrested with a hide in March last year by paying a mere NPRs 50,000 (Tiger falls under CITES I category and anyone found involved in tiger poaching and related crime carries a penalty of 5-15 years in prison and a fine between NPRs 500,000 and 1 million, or both) is equally disheartening for all those working in conservation sector. Those who were involved in investigations and arresting the poacher feel demotivated and say this verdict is a setback to combat wildlife crime in the country. This is unfortunate and the concerned authorities should understand the implications.
Ex PM Kritinidhi Bista giving an interview to a national television network at his home, Kathmandu, Nepal, September 2016. Source: Tweet of the interviewer Suman Kharel.
