Officials said on Wednesday that Vilas of Gudem village was arrested based on information provided by Sudhakar and Santosh, who were arrested by wildlife department officials while they were carrying the tiger skin on a motorcycle from Gudem to Kagaznagar. Vilas buried the tiger skin in his field in Gudem village for safekeeping. The officials When seized The tiger skin was found wrapped in plastic sheet that was placed in a gunny sack. All the three have been remanded to two weeks of judicial custody on Wednesday and sent to the sub-jail in Asifabad, officials said.

"Despite the third arrest, we have no idea who is the brains behind the poaching of the tiger," a wildlife department official said. Despite questioning the trio thoroughly, officials say they did not receive any information that could lead them up the chain of poachers as people involved were unaware what the others were up to.

With the transactions broken up into pieces, no one really knew just how others were involved, the forest department official said. "For instance, Vilas had no information about where Sudhakar and Santosh were headed. This is because a fourth person collected the skin from Vilas and handed it over to them asking them to sell it in Kagaznagar. Similarly, as per our investigation so far, Sudhakar and Santosh only had information about their part of the job, that of collecting the skin and taking it to Kagaznagar to find a buyer," an official said. Vilas, officials said, told them that he was given the skin for safe keeping by one person while a different person collected it from him. The authorities are now searching for three more persons, the one who gave the skin to Vilas, the second who took it from him, and a third who is believed to have procured the skin from Allapalli in Maharashtra from whom it eventually reached Vilas.

"We hope to make progress once we manage to catch the three men we are looking for," a wildlife department official said.