The state forest department confiscated two female elephants who were being smuggled at BadhoiPanchali in Dibrugarh district in April. The incident led to the arrest of three persons - a mahout, his helper, and a middleman of an elephant smuggling racket - on June 17.

Forest officials said the news of the confiscation and arrests was not made public till now as the two kingpins of the racket are on the run. The culprits were tipped off about the arrests and they escaped after a 50-member team of forest officials and police raided their hideout at Merapani in Golaghat district.

Forest minister Pramila Rani Brahma has directed the department to nab the two absconders and break up the racket. "It's a serious crime. After the confiscation of the two elephants, I have asked my officials to track those involved," she said.

Assistant director of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau KK Sarma is looking after the investigation. Digboi forest division's divisional forest officer RK Das said the two rescued elephants - both seven to eight years old - had been trapped in Arunachal's jungles.

"The mahout and his helper, along with the elephants, were on their way to Merapani in Golaghat. When we intercepted them at BadhoiPanchali, they failed to produce legal ownership documents. The elephants were not micro-chipped either," Das said.

He said the racket is linked to another one in Nagaland, bordering Golaghat district, which supplies fake ownership documents for elephants illegally trapped in the wild. As the sale of captive elephants is banned, smugglers in Assam use fake documents to transfer jumbos to other states. "These elephants are then illegally sold," a forest official said.

Following Brahma's order, the two elephants were shifted to Kaziranga last week. "The elephants are currently at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation in Kaziranga. Our priority is to rehabilitate them," Wildlife Trust of India's deputy director Rathim Barman said.