The Voice of Tribals

Tribal gang held at BIA with fake tiger skins

Bosky Khanna

Wednesday, February 4, 2009 2:05 IST

Bangalore: The police have arrested five members of Hakki Pikki tribe (three men and two women) and seized 58 fake tiger skins, 10kg of camel teeth, and four kilograms of bangles made of various animal horns.

The accused were boarding flight number Tango Golf 326 to Bangkok at 8.30pm from the Bengaluru International Airport (BIA). The value of the goods seized was estimated at Rs31.5 lakhs.

The accused, all from Mysore, were identified as Samesh (38), Manoj Kumar (35), Sudesh (21), Kanyakumari alias Samesha (25) and Shivarami (30). They claimed to be professional masseurs. While Samesh, Manoj, Kanyakumari and Shivarami are residents of Tiger block, HD Kotte, Sudesh is a resident of Pakshirajapura village in Hunsur division.

The accused had genuine passports issued from Mysore office. The gang had packed the skins and bangles in bags and boxes, Basavaraj Malaghatti, deputy commissioner of police, north east, said.

Investigations revealed that the arrested were taking the fake tiger skins to Bangkok to sell them each for over Rs50,000.
"This is one of the biggest hauls ever at the BIA. Security will be tightened and a special team will be sent to Hunsur and HD Kotte to ascertain the links of the accused,'' he said.

Airport officials said the articles were seized during a random check.

Last year itself, the CID forest cell found that smugglers and Hakki Pikki tribesmen were applying for passports from Mysore and Hassan.

A senior forest official said most tribal people residing in Pakshiraja village near Mysore are experts in making wildlife articles using the skins of ox, goat, donkey and calves.

"Smugglers sell jewellery claiming they are made of ivory. As camels are not protected under the Wildlife Protection Act and are domesticated in Rajasthan and Punjab, poachers prey on them. Jewellery boxes are made of camel hoofs,'' an official said.

Ravi Chellam, director, Wildlife Conservation Society, India, said even the smuggling of fake tiger skins should be curtailed.

According to AN Chinnappa, trustee of Wildlife First, customers are demanding tiger skin and they do not know whether it is fake or genuine.

General Viewpoint

• Uncivilised, need to be civilised

• Lawless, no respect for law

• Have gone professional cheaters and greedy

• No awareness about importance of forests and scientific conservation

Other Side of the Story: Tribal People’s Response to the Allegations

Uncivilised, need to be civilised

• Who are you to define what is civilized and what is uncivilized?

• Whenever your “civilization” tried to come in contact with us, we have always resisted

• You call your “civilization” good, but see the destruction that your baby civilization has done in only 100 years. In that way, we are more “civilized” as at least the way we live is sustainable over time and has seen centuries.

• We don’t need your civilization, keep it with you please, leave us alone
  

Lawless, no respect for law

• Who says we are lawless. We have our own sets of laws and norms, although not written on paper. ‘Word of mouth’ is enough for us. We are better of than you as at least our laws don’t get manipulated in spite of being written down.

• You call yourself democratic, but laws are formed and all power vested in the hands of a few. We are definitely more democratic than you as we make our laws ourselves and abide by them

• There may be a few things which may be unlawful as per your law but valid as per ours. We will recognize and cut a tree that has lived its life for fuel wood, but the act will remain illegal for Forest department. What seems more logical, licensed mass felling of trees or unlicensed felling of a few dead trees?

• When Maoists take up arms, Media is sympathetic to them although the act is unlawful. But if someone of us kills a tiger, Media talks about stricter punishments, sometimes even life sentence. We wish more people start looking into causes of us doing wrong things also.

Have gone professional cheaters and greedy

• You yourself acknowledge that “Need is the mother of all inventions”. Same is applicable here. You threw us out of the forests, sources of our livelihoods into alien society. We needed money to survive but when you saw us you closed your eyes and did not provide us with even alternative employment, leave aside giving back our forests to us. So we had to retreat back to what we have some knowledge of: forests.

• You can say why we don’t rely on simple forest products but your illegalization of us using forests forces us to turn to more sacred of our species as we get nominal prices only in return from even exotic animal tusks, skins due to middlemen involved.

• Some of us have turned greedy, yes, but who is responsible? Its your system of ‘Capitalism’ which is inherently ‘sinful’. We have never known the concept of money in our lives. We only use forests for our needs, not greed.

• We, who have been touched by capitalism, have lost the sense of working together, a feeling of togetherness. People have started wanting to have more than their neighbours and have started putting a price on everything, instead of valuing what they already have.

• Its high time you all also see the sins and evils of Capitalism and change your system and ways of life. Else, at least leave us alone. We promise to take good care of your forests if you do so.

No awareness about importance of forests and scientific conservation

• We will simply say ‘Refer to forest statistics’.

• In India, wherever we and our fellows reside, there is good forest cover. We have been thrown out of some forests in the name of forest conservation, but they are degrading even faster now.

• We are not aware of scientific conservation but are surely good at indigenous time-tested ways of conservation which have been giving much better results always.

• You say you are better aware of the importance of forests. You forget that we live exclusively on them, we worship them. Forests are more important for us than anyone else in this world.