27 Aug 2020




On a full moon night in early May, poachers struck in Agratoli on the eastern side of India’s famed Kaziranga National Park.

Forest guards found the carcass of a greater one-horned rhinoceros with its horn missing on May 9, confirming it to be a case of poaching. Eight automatic rifle bullets were recovered from the spot.

More than two months after the incident and several arrests and an encounter killing later, police say they have vital clues which suggest that cadres of the Zomi Revolutionary Army, an insurgent group with a presence in the Manipur state in the North East India and its border with Myanmar, are a crucial cog in a transnational rhino horn smuggling racket that extends to South East Asia and China via Myanmar.

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