BELAKOBA: Forest range officer Sanjay Dutta's workplace can be mistaken for a retirement home of cars. Rusty Innovas, ageing Taveras, dusty WagonRs -more than 20 vehicles stand in the office premises, weeds and shrubs growing around them over weeks and months. All have been seized from illegal wildlife traders and timber thieves from the towns, kasbahs and jungles of north Bengal.
"In the last eight years, we've arrested at least 200 poachers and more than 300 timber smugglers. I love my work. I love the jungle," says the 38-year-old who grew up in and around forests, the son of a former ranger.
Dutta heads an armed task force for undercover operations to control poachingand illegal wildlife trade in the region. Confiscations include tiger and leopard skins and bones, ivory , rhino horn, pangolin scales and highpriced snake venom too. His cache also has python skins, red sand boa, gecko and sea cucumber.
The hauls have come at a price. Dutta has been shot at by the timber mafia and escaped being trampled by an angry elephant. He has lost a colleague during an operation to nab timber robbers. Last year Dutta received the Clark R Bavin Wildlife Law Enforcement Award "for dedicated efforts to extinguish wildlife crime and illegal trade, including his work to successfully end timber trafficking in his district and combat rhino poaching." In 2017, Bengal's government honoured him with `Best wildlife protection award'.
His exploits and the awards have made him a local star. "He is an ef ficient and effective officer. Some call him van (forest) Singham," says local journalist Shantanu Kar. The moniker comes from the Ajay Devgn film where the protagonist is a no-nonsense cop of the same name. Adds Tito Joseph of Wildlife Protection Society of India, "He is a quality enforcement officer who works in difficult terrain vulnerable to illegal border trade."
Like the flamboyant cop in the movie, Dutta too flaunts a strong mous tache and isn't averse to strong-arm tactics. In 2007, an operation to apprehend timber thieves ended in tragedy . Dutta recalls how an informer had alerted him to the arrival of three boats with illegal timber near Gajoldoba bar rage on river Teesta. The raiding party nabbed three smugglers. "But the river claimed a colleague Kalukanta Roy .I took help from Bangladesh authorities. But the body was never found. I still see myself as an offender. I'll regret the incident till I die," says Datta, who looks after 3,300 hectares of protected Baikanthapur forest. "We didn't have life jackets then; now we do."
