The RMC Yard police, with the help of city-based wildlife activists, busted an inter-State racket and arrested a tribal man who was allegedly trying to sell star tortoises to his contact from Mumbai.
The accused, from Chikkaballapura, was caught while he was waiting to deliver the consignment which he had stuffed in a backpack.
The accused, who lived with his community in a colony on the outskirts of Chikkaballapura, sourced the star tortoises from the eastern ghats of Karnataka and Andhra border. He was collecting the tortoises for some time based on the order given to him by his contact in Mumbai who offered him huge sum of money, sources said.
The accused were planning to smuggle them to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, which have a huge market for wildlife, officials said.
The police are now trying to track down the receiver who soon after noticing the police managed to escape. This is the second such incident reported as in August this year, the custom officials arrested a man from Uttara Kannada and rescued 60 star tortoises from his check in bag while he was boarding a flight to Bangkok.
