Six held for trying to sell tiger skin

COIMBATORE: A six-member gang, including the son of a sub-inspector of police from Coimbatore, was arrested by forest department officials on Saturday for attempting to sell tiger skin in Udumalpet.
Forest officials said they are yet to ascertain whether any tiger was killed or the smugglers obtained the skin from a tiger which had died of natural causes.Officials said the skin was of an eight-year-old tiger and several people were involved in the smuggling network. “The arrested said they bought the tiger skin from a person in Coimbatore and were looking for a prospective buyer. Based on a tip-off, we rounded them up,” said forest range officer of Udumalpet forest range, G Subbaiah.
The arrested were M Moideen Basha, 30, K Arumugam, 49, A Sheik, 30, Z Yasser Arafat, 24, S Sadasivam, 30, all from Udumalpet in Tirupur district and M Vignesh, 20 from Coimbatore, son of Mani, a sub inspector in Coimbatore.