Kolkata: A new illegal fauna trade seems to be active in the coastal belts of South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal where the traded items are shark meat and shark fins.
The matter came to the notice of the district administration last week after a joint team of the state forest department and the coastal police wing of West Bengal seized 70 crates packed with dried shark meat and dried shark fins at Fraserganj village under Kakdwip sub-division in South 24 Parganas district.
According to the district forest officer Milan Mondal this is the first such seizure of shark meat and shark fins from this belt. “But from now onwards we will conduct regular raids to check these rackets becoming rampant in the area,” he said.
After the seizure of such huge consignments following a tip off by their sources, the members of the raiding team were shocked. “This is because the shark meat and shark fins were dried and packed in such a way that it appeared like consignment of dried fish, locally popular as ‘shutki’, which is quite common in the coastal belts not just in West Bengal but throughout India.
“In the first instance we mistook the consignment for shutki. However, after carefully examining the fatty fibre layers on the substance and odd and square shape of some of the dried consignment we became sure that it was not shutki. Later proper examination revealed that it was dried shark meat and shark fins,” an official of the raiding team said.
“Two persons Akash Das and Ranjit Bag, both residents of this coastal belt in the district have been arrested in this connection. But they are ordinary handlers. An investigation is on whether it is a local or national level racket,” the official said.
He said that although the consumption of shark meat is not illegal in India, the export of shark fins is illegal as per the guidelines of the Union ministry of commerce in 2015.
“As it is in certain coastal pockets of the country shark meat is a favourite dish among many because of its high protein value and taste. Shark fins are also in demand because of the popular belief that it is an aphrodisiac. Certain shady joints offering Chinese food in a particular pocket in Kolkata often serve shark fin soup to customers,,” he said.
It is learnt that for quite some time certain non- governmental organizations have been trying to educate the fishermen about the treatment of sharks trapped in the fishing nets. The fishermen had been advised that in case the shark trapped is still alive, it should be let free in the deep waters.
The forest department official said that “individual shark by-catches are not really our headache. In the last seizure considering the massive amount of consignment seized to the tune of as many as 70 crates, we are sure there is an organized racket behind the entire operation, whose target is organized shark hunting.”
He added that the involvement of wildlife traffickers from Bangladesh also cannot be ruled out since in parts of coastal South 24 Parganas especially in the Sunderbans areas joint crime syndicates involving people from both sides are quite common.
