In a major haul, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and the Special Investigation Team of the Crime Branch seized five leopard skins and arrested two men in Alipur in Outer Delhi on Wednesday.

Moinuddin, hailing from Himachal Pradesh and accomplice Ajay Sharma were caught in possession of the skins and booked under the Wildlife Protection Act for poaching and illegal trafficking. An FIR has been lodged in this regard.

“The leopard skins were over 9 foot in length and belonged to adult leopards,” a Wildlife Crime Control Bureau official told Newsline.

The accused said the leopards were killed in Himachal Pradesh by one ‘Bengali’. The two had brought the skins to the city to sell them off, each of which can fetch upto 1 lakh. The leopard meat and bones have also been sold off. They have also confessed to being in the poaching trade for the past two years.

“We had issued an alert to J-K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand on leopard poaching. Himachal is especially badly hit as all poaching cases happening there usually goes unnoticed,” an official said.

Further investigations on.