Guwahati: In yet another incident of suspected miscreants and timber smugglers from Arunachal Pradesh side allegedly fired upon a team of forest officials from Assam’s Lakhimpur district when the latter busted a timber smuggling racket on Tuesday.
Though some three rounds were fired, no one luckily suffered any injury. Three persons were nabbed and an elephant was seized by the department during the operation.
The incident happened around Tuesday afternoon when a 15 member team of forest officials were on a regular patrolling inside the Dulung reserve forest bordering Arunachal Pradesh.
“We saw an elephant was carrying three logs inside the jungle. There were some five persons. When asked to stop, while two ran towards Arunchal side, we managed to nab three others and the elephant. When forest guards were chasing the others, two rounds of gun fires were shot at a distance on the other side. We also shot one round and then come back,” said a forest official of the team.
Those who were nabbed were identified as Bikash Gogoi, Koheshwar Gogoi and Raju Das. Sources said that the trio and the elephant were allegedly hired by one Arunachal Pradesh based timber smuggler popularly known as Tanu. Forest department likely to file a case against him.
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