Forest guards during an operation at Orang National Park. File picture

Guwahati, Jan. 22: A missing rhino horn has led an Assam police team to Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park in Mangaldoi where the men in khaki are waiting to trap a group of notorious wildlife buyers.

A joint team of police and forest department personnel has already launched a manhunt for the buyers who are believed to have arrived in Mangaldoi town a few days ago to buy a horn.

“The particular horn is that of a rhino which was killed at the national park on January 10,” a source in the forest department said. Poachers killed the female rhino on January 10 on the bank of the Brahmaputra inside the national park and took away the horn.

Although forest personnel along with the army had launched a search operation inside the national park the following morning believing that the poachers may not have escaped, the thugs gave them the slip.

A few days later, four poachers were apprehended from different villages located along the periphery of the smallest national park in the state.

A .303 rifle believed to have been used in killing the rhino was recovered from them. However, the horn could not be found.

A source said a linkman arrested yesterday has revealed that a group of buyers from Bhutan has been in touch with him for the past few days.

“We picked up this linkman, a bicycle shop owner, following specific information and during interrogation he revealed about a group from Bhutan which was supposed to buy the horn,” the source said.

The police believe the horn is still in Mangaldoi town.

“The linkman we have picked up was supposed to arrange a meeting between the group of buyers and the seller. We are not confirmed till now who the seller is. Further interrogation of this linkman would reveal more,” a police official involved in the operation said.

Involvement of rhino horn buyers from foreign countries had come to light a few months back when forest personnel recovered a mobile phone from a poacher who was killed in Orang National Park.

“There were records of a few incoming international calls to the particular phone which was recovered from the dead poacher,” a forest official said.

Sleuths of Wildlife Crime Control Bureau have also traced a few government officials in Nagaland from whose phone calls were made to the slain poacher just before and after the encounter.