Special Report| From Digha Deals to Kolaghat Epicentre: How Odisha STF’s Inter-State Trail Struck the Core of West Bengal’s Exotic Wildlife Syndicate

Bhubaneswar: The investigation into the smuggling and abandonment of five baby orangutans in Odisha has moved several steps closer to the suspected network behind the operation, with the Odisha Police Special Task Force (STF) establishing a trail from the Bhograi dumping site to Digha and, subsequently, to Kolaghat in West Bengal.

The latest STF investigation has produced three important leads. The black Mahindra Thar suspected to have been used in the operation has been located and seized; three relatives of the suspected owner of the Thar (father-son duo) have been detained from a hotel in Digha; and the interrogation and vehicle trail have led investigators to the Kolaghat area, where the suspected main accused are believed to have their residential and business links. The father-son duo remains absconding.

CCTV Trail: From Bhograi Forest to a Digha Hotel

The first decisive break came not from the dumping site itself, but from the movement of the suspected vehicle.

STF teams examined 55 CCTV cameras across the interstate route after identifying a suspicious black Mahindra Thar that entered the casuarina plantation area in Bhograi at around 11:25 pm on September 7, before returning roughly 15 minutes later. The initial footage did not provide a clear enough registration number, forcing investigators to reconstruct the vehicle's route through subsequent surveillance points.

The breakthrough came at the Sonapetya toll plaza on NH-116(B). High-definition toll-camera footage and FASTag records helped investigators establish the vehicle's registration and trace its movement back into West Bengal. From the vehicle-registration trail, the STF reached a private hotel in Digha, where the vehicle was being managed.

The father and son suspected of being behind the operation had already left. But investigators detained three persons staying at the hotel, all of whom were relatives of the suspected duo. Their interrogation provided the STF with the latest operational leads pointing towards Kolaghat.

The vehicle itself has now been seized. Investigators have begun a forensic examination of its interiors, including the carpets, seats and boot area, for biological traces and other material that could connect it with the transportation of the orangutans. Fingerprint examination is also being undertaken, with the three Digha detainees among those whose prints investigators intend to compare with evidence recovered from the SUV.
The forensic exercise is significant because it could potentially convert the vehicle trail into physical evidence linking the suspects and the SUV to the Bhograi abandonment site.

STF's Focus on Kolaghat: A Known Wildlife Crime Corridor

The investigation has now placed Kolaghat in Purba Medinipur at the centre of the suspected trafficking trail.

This is significant because Kolaghat is not appearing in the investigation merely as a geographical point on the route. Enforcement records available with WCCB identify the wider Purba Medinipur belt, including the Kolaghat-Digha corridor, as a significant wildlife-crime and transit zone.

WCCB, DRI and state enforcement records have pointed to the wider area as a staging and transit zone, rather than necessarily the place where wildlife is sourced. The investigation by the agencies details the presence of covert holding facilities and transit warehouses in the region, where illegally trafficked animals can be temporarily concealed before being moved onward.

A major multi-agency operation in July 2026, involving the CBI and DRI with WCCB support, had already exposed the scale of wildlife trafficking networks operating through Maharashtra and West Bengal. The operation resulted in the rescue of 53 protected and endangered animals, birds and reptiles, including slow lorises, binturongs, star tortoises, Egyptian vultures and shikra birds. The investigation traced the network through multiple transit and storage locations.

The enforcement pattern is important to the present orangutan investigation. According to the material available with the STF, wildlife syndicates require intermediate holding locations rather than moving trafficked animals continuously from source to destination.

The Purba Medinipur landscape, with isolated farmhouses, fisheries, aquaculture facilities and highway connectivity, offers precisely the kind of environment that can be used for temporary storage and movement. The investigation says such facilities can be located close to major highways, allowing animals to be shifted quickly into private vehicles or other transport.

From Turtles and Geckos to High-Value Exotic Animals

The significance of Kolaghat also emerges from the broader wildlife-crime history of the region.

Earlier enforcement records had largely dealt with the movement of native wildlife through Bengal's highway corridors, including Indian flapshell turtles and Tokay geckos. But more recent enforcement assessments by WCCB have pointed to networks capable of handling high-value exotic and CITES-listed species.

The present orangutan case therefore raises a different investigative question: whether the same transit infrastructure traditionally used for regional wildlife trafficking is now being utilised for the movement of internationally protected exotic animals.

The STF's tracking of the suspected father-son duo to Kolaghat provides the first concrete investigative link in this case between the orangutan consignment and a location already appearing in wider wildlife-enforcement intelligence.

Kolaghat's geography further explains why the location matters. Situated in Purba Medinipur and connected to NH-16, it provides a highway junction linking Kolkata with coastal Digha and other parts of southern Bengal. Enforcement records have repeatedly identified the Kolaghat Bridge and surrounding highway points as important interception locations in wildlife-crime cases.

The area has also witnessed repeated enforcement against illegal hunting and wildlife-related activities, with seizures and detentions reported around the Kolaghat Bridge and railway station. The WCCB and WB Forest Dept data records intensified enforcement and surveillance during several years, including 2020, 2022 and 2025.

For the STF, however, the crucial point is not simply that Kolaghat has a history of wildlife crime. It is that the vehicle suspected to have been used in the Odisha orangutan operation has now been traced back to a father-son duo whose base is in this same wildlife-trafficking corridor.

What STF Has Asked WCCB About the Thar Owner

The investigation has now entered another important phase.

It is learnt that the Odisha STF has formally sought the assistance of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) to check the identities and antecedents of the absconding father-son duo through WildNet and the WCCB's central criminal database.

The purpose is to establish whether the registered owners/operators of the black Thar have any earlier connection with wildlife crime.

The STF is seeking information on three broad fronts:

What STF wants to establish	What investigators are checking
Earlier wildlife links	Whether the two men appear in WCCB records or previous wildlife-crime investigations
Northeast trafficking connection	Whether their phone numbers, aliases or vehicle history correspond with suspects linked to the Mizoram-Assam wildlife-smuggling corridor
Network contacts	Whether their communications intersect with known wildlife handlers, poachers, kingpins or suspected buyers already monitored by WCCB
Modus operandi	Whether they have previous records involving wildlife trafficking, including domestic wildlife cases in the Purba Medinipur area

The STF is also seeking cross-matching of mobile and suspect information with WCCB records to determine whether the duo had contacts with known handlers or buyers under surveillance. Investigators are additionally examining whether the two have a previous wildlife-trafficking footprint in Purba Medinipur.

Why a Hotel in Digha Was Chosen for the Deal

The STF's findings that "deals were being made at the hotel" perfectly align with the distance from Kolaghat. Since Kolaghat served as the primary staging and storage hideout where the animals were kept, the syndicate could not risk bringing wealthy international buyers or high-profile domestic clients directly to their secret transit warehouses.

Instead, they utilized Digha – bustling, crowded tourist beach town teeming with floating hotel populations – as a smoke screen. The hotel provided a neutral, highly inconspicuous location to negotiate the massive Rs1 Crore+ valuation of the five baby orangutans, while keeping their primary Kolaghat logistics base completely insulated from public view.

The Investigation Now Has a Three-Layer Trail

The orangutan case has consequently moved beyond the initial question of who abandoned the animals in Bhograi.

The STF now has three interconnected investigative layers:

Bhograi → Thar → Digha → Kolaghat

The first layer is the physical movement of the vehicle, reconstructed through CCTV and toll records. The second is the human link established through the Digha hotel and the three detained relatives. The third is the suspected operational base at Kolaghat, where the father-son duo allegedly has its residential and business roots.

The father-son suspects remain absconding, but the STF has intensified its operation in West Bengal, including searches of suspected safe houses and warehouse transit points in the Kolaghat area. The suspects reportedly managed to leave before the raids, although investigators recovered intelligence from the premises, souces revelaed.

The immediate investigative objective for STF is therefore clear: convert the vehicle and family trail into evidence identifying the handlers, establish whether Kolaghat was merely a transit point or an operational base, and determine whether the suspected Thar owners have an earlier footprint in the wildlife-trafficking network.

That is where the WCCB database check becomes critical. If the records establish an earlier wildlife-crime connection, the Bhograi orangutan case could move from being an isolated trafficking incident to a much wider investigation into an established interstate wildlife-smuggling network.
Also Read: EXCLUSIVE | The 2 AM Forest Drop, Bengal Trail & 2015 Eluru Clue: Rescue of Five Baby Orangutans in Baleswar Exposes Interstate Wildlife Smuggling