DRI seizes two elephant tusks near Sonapur; armed suspects flee

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has recovered two elephant tusks weighing about 3.7 kg near Sonapur Toll Gate, roughly 27 km from Guwahati, after a group of armed suspects abandoned them and fled, the agency said on Tuesday.

The interception took place on the evening of November 5 but was made public only now.

How the chase unfolded

According to the DRI's account, officers were acting on specific intelligence about tusks being moved through the area. At around 5.40 pm they spotted five people riding two two-wheelers, one of them carrying a bag that officers suspected held ivory.

When the officers moved in, the group tried to get away. The suspects brandished a khukri and a dao, the traditional machete used across Assam, at the pursuing officers before dropping the bag and escaping into a nearby village. No arrests have been reported so far.

What was found

The abandoned bag held two tusks, one about 29 inches long and the other about 30 inches, together weighing around 3.7 kg. They were seized under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and handed over to the Assam Forest Department, which will take the investigation forward.

Why ivory cases matter in Assam

The Asian elephant is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, which gives it the highest level of legal protection in India, and in Appendix I of CITES, the international convention on trade in endangered species. Any trade in tusks or products made from them is banned.

Assam is home to one of the country's largest wild elephant populations, and Sonapur sits on the edge of the forested hills that run between Guwahati and the Meghalaya border, an area that sees regular elephant movement and frequent human-elephant conflict. Ivory seizures in the region are less common than rhino-horn cases, but forest officials have repeatedly warned that poaching networks use the highway corridors around Guwahati to move wildlife parts out of the state.

The DRI said it would continue intelligence-led action against wildlife trafficking in coordination with other agencies. The case comes in the same week that police and forest teams in Jorhat and Sonitpur arrested suspected rhino poachers.

NEInsider will update this story if the Forest Department identifies or arrests the suspects.