Guwahati: The Dholai police captured two rare types of chimpanzees in an operation near Lailapur. Police suspected that the chimpanzees are allegedly being smuggled out of Indonesia or Myanmar.
The police found the chimpanzees after a search operation when the smugglers attempted to smuggle them through Mizoram.
The authorities have begun looking into the chimpanzee smuggling in the interim.
According to sources, since wildlife is being smuggled through the frontier states of Mizoram and Manipur, there is ample reason to believe they came through neighbouring Myanmar. “Kangaroos are endemic to Australia. Mizoram or Manipur are just the transit routes. Assam is not the destination either. The exotic wildlife is being smuggled somewhere outside the northeast, perhaps for keeping them as pet animals or in some secret zoos,” the source said.
It added, “The difficulty in cracking down on the nexus is that the smuggling is being done through drivers of hired vehicles. They are not the kingpins,” the source added.