Just can’t get under his skin

Since the 80s, two dozen cases have been registered against Chand in different parts of the country but the last time he spent a night behind the bars was in 1998. His case points at what is wrong with the Wildlife Protection Act — which allows a man accused of trading at least 1,000 leopard skins and 500 tiger skins to move around freely.

The biggest lacunae is that while the wildlife and forest department makes the seizure, the arrest of the accused is with the police department, making a mockery of the enforcement of law and prosecution.

The immediate provocation for his arrest this time came in March when two panther skins were seized in Bhilwara district and those arrested named him yet again. A fresh case was filed against Chand and the Rajasthan police had been after him ever since, forcing him to surface. The local court and High Court refused him bail, till he went to the Supreme Court.

Chand has been convicted twice (1982, 1994) and arrested nine times in Delhi and elsewhere and huge quantities of animal skins seized from him. He has allegedly been helped by his brother Rajkumar, his uncle Prem Lal and brother-in-law Kishan Lal in the trade. Incidentally, he belongs to a family whose ancestral trade was taxidermy. Chand’s brother was allegedly a poacher — Corbett National Park, Dudhwa National Park, Sariska in Rajasthan were his targets. There are cases pending against him in Madhya Pradesh.

‘‘It is the lack of presenting the evidence coherently that has helped him and others get away. Often, there is nobody from the government to argue the case and getting bail becomes easy,’’ said Ashok Kumar, Director, Wildlife Trust of India. Chand does not indulge in poaching directly and leaves it to the local villagers and tribes. He just pays the courier charges. His modus operandi: Buying the skin at Rs 2,000-3,000 and by the time it reaches the international market, it is well over Rs 1 lakh.