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Two Czech nationals convicted for theft of butterflies

Calcutta News.Net
Monday 8th September, 2008 (IANS)

An Indian court Monday convicted two Czech nationals, in custody since June 22, of illegally collecting butterflies in West Bengal's Singhalila National Park in violation of wildlife protection laws.

The Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) of Darjeeling Monday pronounced the two guilty of violating the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, as well as the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, according to a statement issued here by the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), an NGO helping the prosecution.

Czech nationals Petr Svacha and Emil Kucera were arrested June 22 from a hotel in Srikhola by forest officials. Hundreds of preserved and live insects as well as equipment were seized from them.

Although similar cases involving foreign nationals have been reported from India in the past, this is the first well-documented case where authorities have successfully tracked and arrested the accused, the statement said.

Investigating officer Arbinden Lepcha said: 'We asked them to show the legal ownership certificate for the insects in their possession. As they did not have any permits, they were arrested and the insects seized under section 50 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act.'

The insects have been sent to the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) for identification.

Kucera, a forester, has a website offering to sell insects, while Svacha is a senior scientist at the Institute of Entomology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASCR) and managing editor of the European Journal of Entomology.

Both said the insects were for research purpose. They had failed to register at the Foreigners' Registration Office, entered India on a tourist visa and did not possess permission for research, the statement said.

One of the witnesses, P. Mukhopadhyay, a ZSI scientist, had testified that a beetle species, Cucujus bicolor, that falls under the Schedule II Part II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, has been identified. Identification of the remaining specimens was on.

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Comments on this story

Karel Adler
09-09-08, 12:07 PM

Two Czech nationals convicted for theft of butterflies

Our presidential banner bores the battle-cry “Veritas Vincint” (Truth will conqueror).
Nobody is disposed to concede own misconduct - so to save appearance of Indian officec, an accusation against them was to be fabricated. The most of such named “evidence” would be inadmissible evidence for court in normal country like USA or states of EU. Coerced confession is also in normal country ünacceptable.
There was big medial struggle heading to blemish Dr. Petr Svacha and his “famulus” Emil Kucera. As usually both sides of conflict are to be listened, here I have several remonstrances:
First of all - in normal civilized country it is impossible, that somebody is hold as political hostage by justice in strike without hearing for more, than one month.
Second - in normal civilized country it is illegal to publish information like number of passport, what Indian newspapers did. Such information is strictly for officialdom.
Third - testimonies of detained are ignored and muted. Information from web-search is not admissible evidence and there is reasonable suspicion of that foresters manipulated and falsified evidence. Both Czech scientists were arrested in hotel, but foresters alleged, that they trespassed into
National Park, what simply is not truth.
Fourth - the offer on internet, which is so many times cited by several Indian ink-spillers in newspapers, is not for sell, but for offer - it usually means for exchange inside entomological community. So it is NO evidence (and if - so only of reporter’s ignorance). It is the very same logic, as if most american chain murders use to drive Volkswagen minibus, so everybody, who drive Volkswagen minibus is mass chain murder.
Fifth - according detained, area of collection was devastated by deforestation, wood-cuttery and cattle-pasturing. For deforestation and cattle-pasturing - only Indians are guilty in it, but it is much more convenient to denigrate foreign scientists, not people living in neighborought to (or maybe even being family members) of “national park” foresters. According reliable data, most endangered gharials are endangered mainly due Indian sand-mining mafia and using riverbanks in national park for vegetables like cucumbers.
Sixth - defamation campaign opened in Indian newspapers seems to be motivated with hidden racism.
Seventh - right to petition is in normal democratic country understood as one of basic and fundamental human rights, so the petition is no way to be stamped as “pressure”.
So - if one or both of this Czech scientists “by an accident” die in India, it is time to answer in own offensive - to promulgate warning for tourists to repulse visit India not to help finance such country and to make a suggestion to editors of international science journals to boycott publishing articles of describing new species of animals, plants, fungi and so on, if author is from Indian research institution. If they will really have to spent such a long time in “white-man-grave”, the boycott should be opened for time till they will be left to go home.
If they did something, they perhaps ignored Indian bureaucracy - it is so terrible, that even Stephen King would not use it in his horrors as exceedingly horrible.
“If your face is wry, do not be angry at the mirror” (Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol)


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