Reliable sources said that the animals were imported under faked documents and the Sindh Wildlife Department remained unaware of the case until an international wildlife protection organisation approached the federal government, which directed the SWD to investigate. However, efforts in this regard remained half-hearted and the matter was now causing embarrassment to Pakistan since the country from where the tigers were illegally transported was demanding their return.
The species, Panthera tigris bengalensisis, is engendered and its international movement is monitored and controlled by the Switzerland-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Sources told Dawn that a First Offence Report — the SWD’s equivalent of the police department’s FIR — had been registered against Mansoor Ahmed of the Pscittacine Agricultural Research Centre (Parc) which maintains an animal handling facility in Gadap. Investigations are under way yet the tigers remain with the traffickers.
Reportedly, the wildlife traffickers prepared a fake import permit purported to have been issued by the Islamabad-based National Council of the Conservation of Wildlife (NCCW), which liaises with the Geneva-based CITES secretariat. This permit was submitted to the authorities in South Africa, from where the tigers were brought over. These authorities requested verification from CITES, which in turn sent the permit to Islamabad for verification.
The crime came to light when the NCCW informed CITES that it had not issued the document, which must therefore be assumed to have been forged. By the time CITES relayed the information to South Africa, it was found that the tigers had already been exported from one of the country’s semi-autonomous regions in August. However, the South African authorities supplied all the information relevant to the movement of the illegal consignment. This information was conveyed by CITES to the NCCW, which subsequently initiated investigations and approached the Sindh Wildlife Department which had, until then, been ignorant of the case.
The import was traced to the wildlife traffickers in September. Sources reported that for reasons unknown, the SWD had been reluctant to take any action. It registered an FOR under continuous pressure from the federal government but no further action was taken.
According to Dawn’s sources, the traffickers occasionally responded to the SWD’s summons by sending small-time representative Mr Waseem, or someone else of similar importance, since the people actually responsible for the crime wielded considerable influence and did not even bother responding to the government department’s calls.
When Dawn contacted the alleged traffickers’ office on the telephone number provided by the SWD, the operator who answered said that the number was that of the organisation’s city head office and not that of the zoo.
When reached, Mr Waseem exercised extreme economy with words and flatly denied his organisation’s involvement in wildlife smuggling. The company had not imported any tigers and neither did it maintain a zoo, he claimed.
Meanwhile, the conservator of the Sindh Wildlife Department, Ghulam Rasool Channa, told Dawn that an FOR under the Sindh Wildlife Protection Ordinance (SWPO) was registered in September and investigations were under way. He added that the inquiry may take another couple of weeks and further action would be taken after it was completed. Mr Channa conceded that this inquiry had taken longer than the usual duration of about a month. He added that the law prescribed long prison terms and heavy fines for violators of the SWPO and stern action would be taken once the investigations were complete.
The NCCW confirmed its role in the case and said that the SWD had identified the traffickers and registered an FOR. The spokesperson explained that the South African authorities approached their Pakistani counterparts and asked for the tigers’ return since they had been taken out of South Africa under forged documents. He told Dawn that the illegally transported tigers could be repatriated under a provision in the relevant laws but that decision would be taken after the SWD submitted to the NCCW a complete report about the animals and their traffickers.