IWN Report — Tuesday, 15 September 2026

A court in Assam has handed down the 11th wildlife crime conviction connected to Manas Tiger Reserve, according to the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). The accused, convicted of trafficking elephant tusks, was sentenced on 19 August to two years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹10,000, with three months of additional imprisonment should the fine go unpaid.

WTI traces the case back to 2011, when it began training frontline forest staff in the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) on wildlife crime investigation, evidence collection and the framing of wildlife offence reports. Consecutive courtroom wins followed from 2017 onward, bringing the tally connected to Manas to 11.

Fifteen Years

Sanatan Deka, WTI’s senior manager and project head for the initiative, credited legal advisory work first led by Bhupendra Nath Talukdar, a retired deputy conservator of forests, and later carried on by wildlife advocate Rizaul Haque, with helping investigating officers build cases that held up in court.

The toughest sentences came in two judgments in 2019, on 8 February and 17 June, when four accused — two in each case — each received seven years’ rigorous imprisonment and a ₹50,000 fine, the maximum penalty under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. The lightest, on 20 April 2022, was a year in prison and a ₹10,000 fine.

More than 1,000 frontline staff have gone through the programme’s training since 2011, run jointly by the Bodoland Forest Department and WTI. A handbook on the Act compiled by Talukdar has gone through seven editions and over 4,000 copies; an eighth is being prepared to fold in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, the codes that replaced the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Evidence Act in 2024.

Frontline Training

WTI announced the conviction on 14 September, the same day it wrapped up the first batch of a six-day course for 23 Forester-1 rank officials from Manas National Park and the neighbouring Baksa Forest Division. The training was run with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a partner that has worked alongside WTI in Manas since the years after the civil unrest of the 1980s and early 1990s, when the park lost most of its rhinos and large numbers of elephants and tigers.

At the valedictory ceremony, James Basumatary, the BTC’s executive member for forests, credited the park authorities with three straight years without a single rhino or tiger poached, and thanked local communities for their support. The event also marked the inauguration of a veterinary treatment-cum-laboratory unit and a GIS and Tiger Cell for the reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that spent nearly two decades on the organisation’s danger list before its removal in 2011.

Sources: Wildlife Trust of India · International Fund for Animal Welfare · UNESCO World Heritage Centre · Press Information Bureau