GUWAHATI: A two-day workshop on “Wildlife Law Enforcement and Combating Wildlife Trafficking” began on Monday in Sukafa Conference Hall at the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Sivasagar.
The workshop has been organised by the office of the Divisional Forest Officer (Territorial), Jayashree Naiding, in collaboration with Wildlife Crime Society (WCS) and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB).
During the inaugural session, Deputy Commissioner of Sivasagar, Dr S Lakshmanan stressed on the importance of creating awareness on various issues involved with wildlife crimes and wildlife trafficking. He also gave emphasis on collaborative efforts of various departments and agencies to counter wildlife trafficking. He said that this workshop would definitely help in understanding the entire clandestine operation of wildlife trade and enable the participants in strengthening enforcement thereby facilitating more arrests of perpetrators.
In the technical sessions on Monday, the resource persons, Mridula Vijairaghavan of WCS- India, dealt in length on Wildlife Act, 1972 and Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973; Dr KK Sarma of WCCB elaborated on search and seizure; Anirban Chaudhuri, Training Coordinator of WCS, spoke on identification of species, their parts and products in trade; Sahila Kudalkar from WCS- India gave an introduction on wildlife crime and regional overview of wildlife crime in Assam.
Tuesday’s technical session will deal with topics like financial investigation in wildlife crimes; interrogation, confessions and recording a statement; simulation exercise on search, seizure and drafting a WLOR; complaint and discussion on the Assam Forest Regulation Act, 1891 amended up to date. The sessions will be deliberated upon by Dr KK Sarma of WCCB; Sonali Badhe of the Directorate of Enforcement; MI Varghese, IFS; Mridula Vijairaghavan of WCS- India; Sahila Kudalkar from WCS- India and Anirban Chaudhuri of WCS.
