The ministry of home affairs, citing security concerns, has turned down the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau’s request for permission to use mobile call detail reports directly from mobile service providers to track down poachers.
The WCCB was specially established under the Wildlife Protection Act to combat organised wildlife crime. But with 70 per cent of wildlife crime being facilitated by the Internet and mobile phones, the ministry of environment and forests finds itself fighting a losing war.
Mr T. Chatterjee, secretary, MoEF, wrote three letters to home secretary R.K. Singh pointing out that the WCCB had desperately tried to obtain CDRs of wildlife trafficking criminals through Central and state police organisations, but to little avail. The MoEF next approached the Intellige-nce Bureau but even that arrangement did not prove satisfactory. In his letter to Mr Singh, Mr Chatterjee mentioned that inputs from IB were not as quick as anticipated. “In wildlife crime, timely availability and analysis of information is of vital importance as our sustained efforts on conservation can be negated by poachers in a very short time. Moreover, the mod-us operandi of the poacher and smuggler syndicates now involves the use of very sophisticated arms,” Mr Chatterjee wrote.
Mr Singh, however, wrote to the WCCB refusi-ng permission citing security concerns. MP Maneka Gandhi has written in protest to home minister Sushilkumar Shinde war-ning that “wildlife crime today is bigger than any other form of crime and it is destroying India’s species and forests”.