3 yrs, 100 tigers killed & counting: new-age poaching mafia taps tech, digital payments, hawala networks

News Snapshot:

Investigators from five states, four Central agencies, and the Interpol; three nationwide alerts; two critical meetings of chief wildlife wardens; over a dozen arrests in five states this year alone; and, a syndicate spread across the country’s tiger map. If the usual suspects in poaching are subsistence hunters, touts scouting forest settlements to fix deals and impoverished “carriers” in small towns sneaking skin and bones in polythene sacks on trains and buses, think again. A poaching network marked by an unusual coalition of groups from tribal communities in central India, using digital payments with “hawala funds” and separate supply lines...