An international wildlife offender, wanted under an INTERPOL Red Notice and involved in an alleged trafficking of tiger body parts, has been arrested by the Madhya Pradesh State Tiger Strike Force (MPSTSF), in a coordinated operation with the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), officials said on Friday (December 5, 2025).
According to a statement by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Yangchen Lachungpa, 44, was held from Lachung in North Sikkim on December 2, based on intelligence inputs and coordinated ground action.
“The [Red] Notice for the accused was obtained recently on 2nd October 2025 by WCCB, in its capacity as INTERPOL Liaison Office. The operation was carried out with full cooperation from Sikkim Police, Forest Department, Judiciary and District Administration, and also received support from SSB in Sikkim and Siliguri for secure transit arrangements, in view of heightened public sentiment,” the statement read.
Ms. Lachungpa had been booked in a wildlife crime case on July 13, 2015, by the M.P. Forest Department in Kamti Range, Satpura Tiger Reserve, for alleged poaching and illegal trade of tiger body parts and pangolin scales, with seizures including four pieces of tiger bones, 1.5 kg pangolin scales, tiger skin, tiger bone oil extract.
Apart from Ms. Lachungpa, the Ministry said, 35 other accused had been named in the 2015 case, of which 27 had been convicted by a local court in M.P.’s Narmadapuram district, even though she remained absconding for years.
“Another main accused in the case, Jai Tamang, arrested in October, 2015, confessed that he supplied wildlife contraband to Ms. Lachungpa, who also provided him shelter. His confession firmly established her role in the trafficking chain. Ms. Lachungpa was briefly held by the MPSTSF in September, 2017, but violated her bail conditions and absconded, after which an arrest warrant was issued against her on July 29, 2019,” the Ministry further said.
“A resident of Lachung/Gangtok, Sikkim, she was identified as a key member of an organised trafficking network with links from poachers and middlemen to transboundary illegal wildlife trade routes spanning Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, and operating across multiple Indian cities including Delhi, Siliguri, Gangtok, Kolkata, Kanpur, Itarsi, and Hoshangabad,” the Ministry said.
“Following her continued evasion, WCCB sought an INTERPOL Red Notice through the CBI (India’s National Central Bureau (NCB) for INTERPOL, handling Red Notices for all crimes, including wildlife offences). The Notice was issued for Ms. Lachungpa on 2nd October 2025 as a ‘fugitive wanted for prosecution’,” it added.
The accused was produced before a local court in Gangtok on December 3 after a medical examination and her bail application was rejected. She was granted a transit remand to M.P. where she will undergo further legal proceedings.
Earlier in January this year, the MPSTSF had also arrested Tashi Sherpa, another key member of the organised trafficking network, near Darjeeling in West Bengal, with officers saying that his call detail records and interrogation had given them inputs on Ms. Lachungpa.
Published – December 06, 2025 01:16 am IST
