After 10-year chase, wildlife sleuths nab Interpol-wanted tiger trafficker ‘ghost’ from Indo-China border

BHOPAL: In the snowbound silence of Lachung, in north Sikkim, 43-year-old wildlife trafficker Yangchen Lachungpa, wanted by Interpol, finally ran out of mountains.

For 10 years, agencies across India and abroad hunted for Yangchen — a woman who, investigators said, moved like a ghost, slipping across borders, abandoning safe houses hours ahead of raids, and allegedly building trafficking corridors that linked Madhya Pradesh's tiger reserves to Nepal, Tibet and China.

But on Dec 2, in a tiny Himalayan village just a few km from the India-China border, the chase ended in a way even veteran officers describe as "like watching a film play out in real time."

As radios died and torches dimmed in the freezing darkness, the MP State Tiger Strike Force (STSF) and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) team found itself inside the authority of the Dzumsa, Lachung's centuries-old self-governing council. Villagers reportedly blocked the only exit, and elected headmen demanded documents. And the officers — carrying warrants for one of the world's most elusive wildlife traffickers — were forced to defend every procedural step before being allowed to detain Yangchen.

At the centre of this standoff sat the woman they had chased for a decade — Yangchen Lachungpa, also the former wife of 44-year-old Jaiy Tamang, arrested from Delhi for his alleged role in smuggling pangolin scales. Tamang's confession years earlier had first exposed Yangchen as a critical architect of the smuggling chain.

Officers said Yangchen allegedly tried to destroy two cellphones and a coded diary containing names, routes and hawala references before the arrest could be completed. "It was part standoff, part village trial, part global crime bust. We had an Interpol fugitive sitting in front of us, but first, we had to convince a 400-year-old council that Indian law applied," said an investigator.

Her eventual arrest came only after months of technical surveillance, decoy movements and night-time encirclements across high-altitude terrain. The operation was monitored closely by MP govt, officials said, given the seriousness of the tiger-poaching case.

Yangchen's arrest marks one of India's most significant breakthroughs in wildlife enforcement — and one of the rare arrests executed following an Interpol Red Notice, issued on Oct 2, 2025, at India's request. It allowed law enforcement in 195 countries to detain her if found.

Originally from Tibet, Yangchen allegedly built trafficking corridors that funnelled tiger parts, pangolin scales, red sanders, shatoosh wool and Cordyceps to international buyers. She frequently moved between Delhi and remote Sikkim hideouts, often vanishing just before surveillance teams closed in.

The role of this syndicate surfaced repeatedly in international seizures. In 2013, Nepal Police intercepted five tiger skins and seven sacks of bones en route to Tibet; DNA testing later matched one hide to Pench tigress T-13. In 2015, Ethiopian authorities confiscated eight tiger skins believed to have originated in central India. Both cases, investigators said, bore the hallmark of the alleged network Yangchen helped create.

The case that finally cornered her began in July 2015, when MP authorities seized tiger bones, skin, pangolin scales and bone oil extract from Satpura Tiger Reserve. STSF uncovered what officials called a "highly structured multinational trafficking chain." As many as 31 accused were arrested, and 27 were convicted by a Narmadapuram court in 2022. But Yangchen, the woman believed to be the missing link — the one connecting village-level poachers to buyers beyond the Himalayas — remained out of reach.

She was arrested once in Sept 2017, but went on the run after obtaining interim bail. In 2019, her anticipatory bail was rejected, and she disappeared again, prompting authorities to seek international intervention.

After her arrest in Lachung, Yangchen was transported to Gangtok for medical examination and produced in court on Dec 3, where MP authorities secured transit remand. Sikkim Police provided vital support in what officers called "one of the most culturally delicate and operationally dangerous extractions in recent memory".

Payments in the network were allegedly routed through Kathmandu, Siliguri and border villages, while suspected wildlife stockpiles were maintained in Satpura, Pench, Betul and Tamia forests. The coded diary recovered in the raid is expected to reveal financial backers, international contacts and the deeper structure of the trafficking chain.

A senior enforcement officer said the breakthrough "finally gives investigators a chance to expose the top tier of global wildlife contraband markets," adding that more arrests across states — and potentially across borders — are likely.