BHUBANESWAR: Following the recovering of three turtles by the Chandaka Wildlife Division officials from a city hotel near Nalco square on Monday night, the Mancheswar range of the city forest division has seized six turtles from a private medical college and hospital campus here on Wednesday. The reptiles were being kept in an artificial water body inside the campus, the forest officials said.
According to sources, the illegal
cultivation of turtles found from the Hi-tech Medical College and Hospital here
is illegal as per section-9 of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Forest
officials recovered the turtles after drying up the water body inside the
medical campus. After the incident, the administrative officer Jyotirmay Panda of
the college was arrested.
According to the City Forest
Division’s Mancheswar range officer Ashok Kumar Mishra, six turtles including
four adults and two minors were seized from the medical college after
conducting raid. The turtles were weighing 500gm to 2.5 kg, he said. Out of the
six turtles, four belong to Softshell species and two others were from Rivertaint
species, he added.
Mishra said that their team would
conduct raid on the similar aquariums where the wildlife animals were illegally
kept without the knowledge of the wildlife officials. “Due to the ignorance of
law, some people are committing the serious mistakes unknowingly,” he said.
It may be noted that officials of
Mancheswar forest range had seized 25 turtles and arrested one West
Bengal resident Madan Kumar Maiti when he was coming to the city
in a bus carrying turtles in a bag.
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