Shillong, May 3: To curb poaching in Meghalaya, Forest and Environment minister James PK Sangma on Monday informed that the department has proposed to arm forest guards, now that militancy has come to an end.

Sangma stated that due to the incidents in the past when militancy was on its heyday, they would snatch the arms given to the forest guards. Following those incidents, the department decided to disarm the forest guards.

However, now that it has come to an end, Sangma stated that they are now looking at going back to arming forest guards so that they can do their jobs better.

He stated that this proposal is being processed right now.

It is to be mentioned that on April 19, based on a tip-off, a joint team of the forest department, Meghalaya Police and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) raided the house of an Assam Rifles jawan at Khliehumstem village in Ri-Bhoi district.

Upon raiding the jawan’s house, the team recovered 44.64 kg scales of Chinese Pangolin, four live Chinese Pangolins and 43 Tokay Geckos. An electronic weighing scale used to weigh the animals, utensils used to keep the live Pangolins, seven mobile phones, Rs 25,500 in cash, one brown colour bag and three vehicles bearing registration numbers AS 025 -0127, ML-10 A -9330 and ML 10 C 4056.

Along with the jawan, seven others who were present in the house were also arrested.