Lucknow, Jan 21 (IANS) Two poachers were arrested with skins of leopard, spotted deer and crocodiles in Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh, police said Thursday.
Hardev Singh, 40, and Jhamman Gaur, 26, were nabbed late Wednesday from Pannuganj town in Sonbhadra, around 250 km from Lucknow, during a joint operation conducted by state forest officials and the police.

“We recovered the skin of a leopard, a spotted deer and two crocodiles from the duo,” inspector Shridhar Pandey told reporters Thursday in Sonbhadra.

“They have confessed that the wild animals were killed in a forest in Chhattisgarh. They were planning to sell the skins to their clients at Sonbhadra and Varanasi when they were nabbed,” he added.

According to the police, the duo has been into the poaching racket for the last five years and sold animal hides to clients in Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan.

Singh and Guar have been booked under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), police said.