Rhino horn verification begins in Assam

Led by former Information Mohan Chandra Malakar, IFS(Retd) , the committee this mo from the strong room of the Golaghat Treasury under the watchful eyes of the district administration and they were taken to the Golaghat Circuit House where the conference room was transformed to a verification centre.

Besides the verification committee members, the forest officials, who had signed and sealed the trunks during the time of deposition were invited to check the seal of the trunk.

This is noteworthy that each of the rhino horns stored in the state treasury, already have a Government of India (GOI) serial number and that was tallied today while preparing the inventory.

Weights and photographs of the horns were also taken. For scientific evaluation, the original weight and present weight have also been recorded.

The rhino horns were physically examined by the experts of the committee. Whenever it was necessary, the opinion of the forensic scientists were sought, who had opened amicro lab in the verification room itself.

“The verification process yielded interesting results. The rhinos horns were found in very good condition and there were negligible decay as each of them were wrapped in plastic bags.Some of the rhino horns were as big as 1.615 kg found in 1992 in Bagori range while the smallest one is 20 gram,” a state government official said.

“This is noteworthy that Kaziranga National Park on an average year lose around 100 rhinos due to normal age old death, infighting, mud stuck, matting, tiger attack and flood,” the government official said.

Considering the large stock in Golaghat treasury, the verification process will continue for some time but shall take a break for the Independence Day celebration.

This is noteworthy that the Government of Assam constituted the Rhino Horn Verification Committee (RHVC) following wide spread suspicion about the genuineness of the  rhino kept in 13 treasuries of Assam.

Golaghat has the highest number of rhino horns, followed by Nagaon, Tezpur and Guwahati treasury.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)