Ivory antiques seized in Cuttack

CUTTACK: Two persons were arrested and 53 exquisitely carved pieces of ivory were recovered from them, a senior police official said.

"We got specific inputs about the trade in ivory antiques in the city and were alert. Malgodown police accosted two persons at College Square this morning and seized the ivory materials from them. We had never expected that the haul of banned materials would be so huge," Deputy Commissioner of Police A N Sinha said.

The seized ivory, kept in a bag and weighing about 20 kg, was estimated to cost over Rs one crore in the international market. It is also believed that an inter-state racket was behind this illegal trade.

Police said the arrested persons--Kishore Kumar Naik of Kendrapara and Pramod Mohanty of Jagatsinghpur district-- would be handed over to forest department for initiating cases and prosecution under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

Forest officials said the seized ivory antiques are very old and must have been procured from outside the state.

"It seems the consignments must have been stolen either from a museum or from some royal family collection," said a forest official.

Police have not been able to ascertain the source and destination of the consignment yet. A senior police official however, maintains that since there are no markets in the state for such antiques, the consignment was definitely on its way to some outside destination.

If convicted, the arrested men could be jailed for three to seven years.