The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Trade in ivory thriving in city

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 10, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Trade in ivory thriving in city

Some ivory craftsmen are suspected to be on the payroll of lawbreakers in the antique and artefact trade, writes G. Anand

Illegal ivory trade seems to be flourishing secretly in the city. On January 17 this year, the Forest Department seized a pair of elephant tusks from the house of a suspected ivory dealer at Eenchakkal. The tusks, weighing 2.2 kg, were extracted from a young male elephant shot dead by poachers in the Adimali Forest Range recently.

On May 2004, the police seized an ivory Nataraja idol from a car at East Fort. In 2002, the Central Bureau of Investigation inquiring into the theft of wildlife articles from the Forest Department's strong room at Olavakkode in Palakkad district seized two ivory idols from the house of a suspect at Muttathara.

In May 2000, the Forest Department seized 30 kg of ivory, including a finished idol of Lord Venkiteswara weighing 10 kg, from a house near Vallakkadavu. The same year, ivory artefacts valued at more than Rs.6 lakh were confiscated from the house of a craftsman at Eenchakkal.

According to wildlife enforcers, a significant quantity of declared private stocks of ivory had been illegally sold to the craftsmen for making artefacts.

Ivory products were secretly smuggled abroad for rich collectors. Whale and camel bone, which resemble ivory, were often used for making cheap artefacts that are sold as ivory to unsuspecting collectors, a Forest Department official said. The illegal ivory trade was centred around Karyavattom, Kazhakuttam, Vallakkadavu, Kovalam and Eenchakkal, official sources said. Wildlife enforcers suspect that some of them were on the payroll of lawbreakers in the antique and artefact trade in the State.

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