Assam Police have arrested two individuals linked to rhino horn trading on Tuesday in the Bokakhat area near Kaziranga National Park in Assam and recovered a horn from their possession. The arrested rhino horn traders were identified as Budheswar Chingte and Bhakta Bahadur Thapa. Based on inputs, local police launched an operation on Tuesday at Bokakhat Chipahi village and arrested the duo, where the horn was recovered.
“Police arrested two people named Budheswar Chingte and Bhakta Bahadur Thapa and recovered a rhino horn. Our investigation is on,” said Dhrubajyoti Nath, Additional Superintendent of Police, Kaziranga. “Assam is known for its one-horned rhinos, and the state attracts a large number of tourists who come to visit such sites. Poaching of rhinos was rampant in the past, which has now come down drastically due to stringent surveillance and other elevated security arrangements being put in place by the authorities. In 2021, the number of rhinos lost to poaching was the lowest in 21 years, at just 1. In 2013 and 2014, as many as 27 rhinos were killed by poachers.
To give a message to poachers that rhino horns don’t have any medicinal or monetary value, the Assam government publicly burned a stockpile of 2,479 horns in September. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had then said, “The use of rhinos’ horns for medicinal purposes is a myth.”
“The one-horned rhino is not only integral to our civilisation, but also a symbol of our prized heritage and identity. We are preserving 94 rhino horns for display at a museum to be set up at Kaziranga National Park,” Sarma said on the day those horns were put to flames. As per the latest census data put out by the national park authority, Kaziranga National Park is now home to 2,613 rhinos, and the numbers are increasing. “There was an increase of 200 individuals from 2018 despite 400 deaths mainly due to natural causes,” the park authorities postedin March.