Aizawl, May 30 (IANS): Mizoram Police have rescued 24 exotic animals, including 18 snakes at Kanhmun along the Mizoram-Tripura border and arrested two people, both residents of Tripura, police said on Thursday.

A Mizoram Police official said that the exotic animals were smuggled from Myanmar and were being ferried to Agartala.

The official said that the police personnel at Kanhmun intercepted a Tripura-bound vehicle and rescued 18 snakes, four turtles and two monkeys.

The driver of the vehicle Chawngthanmawia (32), a resident of Amarpur in Tripura's Gomati district, was arrested.

Chawngthanmawia, during preliminary interrogation, told the police that the consignment of exotic animals was handed over to him by one Binoi Molsom (34) at Zodin bus stand in Aizawl and asked him (driver) to deliver them in Agartala.

Police later arrested Molsom, a resident of North Tripura district, at Sairang.

The exotic animals were handed over to a range officer of the Kanhmun forest range under the state forest department for further legal actions, the official said, adding that the police were interrogating the two detainees to obtain further details.

While the smuggling of endangered and exotic animals from Myanmar has been rising, the upkeep, nursing, protection and care of the recovered wild animals is not always appropriate and adequate, raising concerns among wildlife experts and animal lovers.

Northeast India's biodiversity conservation organisation ‘Aaranyak’, Mizoram-based Youth for Environment Justice Mizoram (YEJM), and Tripura-based Centre for Aquatic Research and Environment (CARE) recently separately urged the authorities to take all precautionary measures, care, treatment, protection and rehabilitation of the wild animals after their recovery.

They said that after the recovery of the huge number of smuggled endangered and exotic animals, they, as per the guidelines of the Central Zoo Authority, must be kept in proper quarantine with proper diet and care but in most cases, this is not being done.