The Statesman – India
June 18, 2003
EDITORIAL
Unscrupulous poachers pass off fakes
Indians can probably beat anyone
else in their ability to copy, and copy in such meticulous detail
that no one can tell it apart from
the original. You name it, we can fake it — even if the item
is banned. The Enforcement Department’s recent haul of tiger
skins and ground rhino horn, both banned o preserve the near extinct
animals, is a case in point. ED officials may have patted themselves
on the back when they caught sellers of tiger skins, only to find
that they are in fact no more than skins of the lowly donkey painted
to order. As neither the donkey nor bamboo shoots are protected,
they do not fall under The Wildlife Protection Act and so the culprits
got away scot free.
Maybe those arrested were not dealing
with banned substances, but they were certainly perpetrating a
fraud selling
fakes. Surely that
should have been enough for the enforcement agencies to keep them
behind bars. There is something called the Indian Penal Code! If
buying or possessing a banned item is a crime, then surely passing
off donkey skins as tigers and bamboo shoots as rhino horn, and
making a financial killing is a fraud and a crime. The laws needs
to be
enforced effectively. The impression given is that the authorities
are awestruck at the ingenuity of the criminals to the extent that
they are blind and struck dumb. Get to it!
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