Customs ceased hide of wild animals from Postal department flight

By Pinaki Das

Agartala, Apr 9 : Customs officials ceased hundreds of hides of wild animals, several kilograms of marijuana, and several cartons of foreign brand cigarettes in a cargo aircraft of the Indian Postal department.

The Kolkata bound flight CD 9901 was going from Imphal via Agartala.

Customs officials said based on a confirm information of movement of illegal material by the postal cargo flight the offloaded the freight and found the consignment of banned items worth more than 50 lakh.

No arrest has been made in connection with the seizure of the illegal goods.

The packets was opened in presence of the forest department officials and hundreds of hide of rare animals like bison, deer and wild buffaloes were discovered from it.

According to a custom official, the ceased items have entered from Mayanmar.

"We have seized 178 big packets containing animal skins, foreign made shoes, cigarettes and marijuana was offloaded from the plane," said Sucheta Sreejesh, Deputy Commissioner of the Customs Department.

Movement of banned item by postal department is quite common and earlier also there has been such incidents in Tripura. Earlier last week drugs worth 22 lakhs were also recovered from it.

Customs suspect a nexus between a section of the postal department staff and an international racket in the incident.

Use of government machineries for smuggling is in practice and mainly to get easy access without much interference of security agencies.

The postal department introduced the cargo aircraft last year in the northeastern region to transport various postal goods to and from the region.

ANI