Bhubaneswar: The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), a statutory body fighting organised wildlife crime in the country, will soon assist the state Forest department officials to unearth the possible international links of the snake venom smuggling racket busted in the Capital city Saturday.
The Forest department officials seized a litre of snake venom from members of the racket.
The department officials have written to the WCCB’s zonal office at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh seeking the latter’s help in the investigation into the snake venom racket.
A team of officials from WCCB will soon visit Odisha for the probe, sources said. The Forest department officials, during investigations, came across several vital clues regarding the possible international links of the snake venom smuggling racket.
“The arrested members of the racket have revealed that they used to supply the venom to the customers in Kolkata,” a source in the Forest department told Orissa POST.
Sources also revealed that the seizure of large amount of venom indicated that the smugglers must have collected it from outside the state.
The arrested smugglers are part of an interstate racket that might have links with cartels in some neighbouring countries, like China and some European countries.
The snake venom is used as psychotropic drugs in these countries, sources said. The Forest department is likely to seek the help of Crime Branch, the premier investigating agency of state police, to investigate the case alongside the WCCB.
Meanwhile, the officials are yet to nab Satayanarayan Das, the purported kingpin of the racket in Odisha despite several raids at different parts of the state since Saturday.
Notably, seven smugglers including the son of the kingpin from Bolangir were arrested by the forest sleuths Saturday.
PNN
