11 firearms, war-like stores recovered in Manipur
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India Today
4 hours ago
- India Today
Poachers silenced, hear the call of the wild at Jaldapara National Park again
At dawn, the forests of Jaldapara National Park in West Bengal stir to life. Elephants trumpet across misty grasslands. Rhinos tread ancient trails. Above it all, a heavy silence lingers—a silence won through blood, perseverance and a battle fought far from public years, a shadow stalked these woods: Rikoch Narjinary, one of India's most elusive and notorious wildlife poachers. Leading a ruthless syndicate armed with military-grade weaponry, Rikoch's gang turned the sanctuaries of north Bengal and India's Northeast into hunting grounds. Rhinos, elephants, leopards—none was spared in the pursuit of in March last year, that shadow finally fell. After a painstaking, seven-day operation, blending intelligence, surveillance and daring fieldwork, forest officers and police teams captured Rikoch in Assam's Kamrup district. It was a quiet arrest, one that ended a decade-long reign of terror that had bled the forests dry.'Poachers like Rikoch Narjinary and his associates posed a real threat to our conservation efforts,' says Novojit Dey, assistant wildlife warden of Jaldapara National Park. 'For monetary gain, they killed countless animals, such as rhinos and elephants, across the entire northeastern part of India and north Bengal. Their conviction will send a strong message to poachers that if you choose Jaldapara as your hunting ground, we will hunt you down.' For the law enforcers, it was not merely an arrest; it was a dismantling of a brutal empire. Rikoch's syndicate operated like a paramilitary force. Armed with sniper rifles, AK-47 rifles, night-vision equipment and high-calibre hunting guns, they executed daring strikes deep inside protected reserves. Recruits came from Assam, Manipur and Bengal. Horns were smuggled across porous borders into Myanmar, reaching clandestine markets most notorious shooter, Leken Basumatary, brought down rhinos with cold precision— a single horn reportedly fetching Rs 36 lakh. The Ray brothers—Ranjit, Paresh and Barun—served as the backbone of the strike teams while Basumatary supplied weapons and managed a prison sentence could not halt Rikoch. After being jailed in 2016 for carrying an AK-47, he emerged more cunning, slipping into the wild, using new identities, languages and burner phones to stay ahead of the law. As enforcement agencies intensified their hunt, he simply melted into the forests of Manipur or the riverine islands of capture was a masterstroke of patience and precision. Tracking a bank-linked mobile number, officers conducted ground reconnaissance, verified identities with covert photography, and secured a fresh arrest warrant under a veil of secrecy. Any leak could have sabotaged the operation.'This was a movie-like operation,' said Parveen Kaswan, an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer in charge of the Jaldapara National Park, who led the mission. 'It involved technical intelligence, informers, ground teams and absolute professionalism. Bringing Rikoch and his gang down has changed the conservation landscape of North Bengal,' he this April marked the fall of the syndicate's core. Seven key members were sentenced to four years' imprisonment and fined Rs 40,000 each. Although Rikoch initially received only a one-year term in one case, two further trials await him—and forest officials are pushing for the maximum seven-year wider war against wildlife crime also pressed on. Over 21 criminals were arrested in the past year alone, with significant seizures of wildlife contraband. Fifteen more individuals unrelated to Rikoch's group faced convictions as enforcement tightened across the entire battle took its toll. Leken, the syndicate's deadliest asset, died in custody last December after providing critical intelligence that helped bring the network down. Basumatary faced convictions under both wildlife and narcotics laws, reflecting the tangled web of crime in which the gang Jaldapara's wilderness breathes easier. The heavy bootprints of poachers have faded from the trails. Rhinos wallow undisturbed in muddy pools. Herds of elephants drift like grey ghosts through grasslands bathed in golden scars of the past remain—but so too does a new spirit of vigilance. In this corner of India, the hunters have been hunted, and the wild has won a precious to India Today Magazine- Ends advertisement
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
How Jane Street co-founder landed in a coup controvesy
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel New York-based trading firm Jane Street Capital was recently barred from the Indian securities market by markets regulator Sebi which allegeed the company used its trading strategies to manipulate stock market, leading to losses for millions of retail investors. Jane Street has rejected the allegation. This is not the first controversy the unusually secretive trading company has run June, the quiet, secretive world of high-frequency trading was rocked by revelations that Robert Granieri , a low-profile co-founder of Jane Street Capital, was financially linked to an alleged coup attempt in South Sudan. Granieri, a reclusive but powerful figure in finance, claimed he had been duped. But this revelation threw an uncomfortable spotlight on both Granieri and Jane Street Capital, the enigmatic firm he helped create and still the heart of the controversy is Peter Ajak , a Harvard Fellow and economist, who is now being prosecuted in the US for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to overthrow South Sudan's government and install himself as leader. US prosecutors allege that Granieri, perhaps unwittingly, bankrolled part of this operation. Federal prosecutors in Arizona first charged Ajak and activist Abraham Keech in March 2024 with conspiring to illegally export arms to South Sudan, their home country, to overthrow its government. Both have pleaded not guilty."The indictment reads like a cinematic plot: A Harvard Fellow and another activist allegedly wanted to buy AK-47s, Stinger missiles and grenades to topple South Sudan's government. What they lacked was enough cash," wrote Bloomberg in defense is straightforward: he believed he was funding a humanitarian initiative aimed at promoting democracy and economic growth in the war-ravaged East African nation. He claims Ajak misrepresented the true intent of the reported by the New York Post in June, Granieri allegedly provided $7 million in two payments after meeting Ajak in February 2024 at a Midtown Manhattan condominium, prosecutors said. Ajak's lawyers stated in a May court filing, which was reviewed by The Post and first reported by Bloomberg, that Granieri's financing was 'vital to the plan". They claimed in a court document that without his support, the alleged conspiracy would have been impossible. The attorney for the Jane Street founder, whose firm had hired now-convicted fraudster and former FTX CEO Bankman-Fried in 2013, claimed he was misled by Ajak, whom he believed was a human rights activist. 'Granieri is a longtime supporter of human rights causes,' his lawyer was quoted by Bloomberg as saying. 'In this case, the person Rob thought was a human rights activist defrauded Rob and lied about his intentions.'The New York Post further reported that the case also references chess champion Garry Kasparov, though he is not named as a defendant nor accused of any wrongdoing, for allegedly connecting Ajak with Granieri through their shared work with the Human Rights Foundation. Ajak, a former child soldier who resettled in the US, studied at Harvard's Kennedy School and worked as a World Bank economist before becoming a South Sudanese opposition activist. He and Keech allegedly met with an undercover agent and inspected weapons in a Phoenix warehouse before their arrest, the May 29 motion said. Defense attorneys allege US authorities were aware of the plan, citing a 'public authority' defense and claiming that the State Department told Ajak in October 2023 it would not support non-democratic regime change. They also accused prosecutors of selectively targeting Ajak and Keech, both black men, while sparing Granieri and the legal system will eventually determine the extent of Granieri's culpability, the South Sudan controversy marked a rare public misstep for Granieri and Jane Street Capital. For a firm that has thrived on discretion and outsmarting rivals in silence, the spotlight must have been in 2000, Jane Street Capital is a global proprietary trading firm operates across a range of asset classes, including ETFs, equities, bonds and cryptocurrencies. It has earned a reputation for being both highly profitable and fiercely secretive. With headquarters in New York and offices in many countries, Jane Street is a dominant force in the world of quantitative finance. It is known for hiring elite mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists, and cultivating a culture more akin to a university research department than a traditional trading sets Jane Street apart is its organizational structure. There is no CEO. Instead, it functions as a kind of technocratic republic, where around 40 senior partners run the firm collectively. Among them, Granieri, the last remaining co-founder still active in the firm, is considered first among equals. Unlike other Wall Street firms that engage with media, public investors, and regulatory frameworks in a highly visible way, Jane Street tends to shun attention. Even internally, information flows are tightly controlled. This secrecy has allowed Jane Street to build advanced trading systems and algorithms without interference or allegations against Granieri put it in headlines in June, soon it was hit by a far bigger controversy when Sebi accused it of stock manipulation. Indian regulators have opened a broader probe into Jane Street's activities, while the company denied any wrong-doing on its part. The ban came after an unusually volatile quarter, where Jane Street reportedly made record profits during a spike in global tariffs. Its revenues rivaled those of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley . That kind of financial firepower has always kept Jane Street in regulators' crosshairs, but this time, global scrutiny is controversies come at a time when Jane Street Capital is joining the big league. Its net trading revenues hit $20.5 billion last year, up from $2.1 billion in 2019. In the first quarter of 2025, its net trading revenues hit $7.2 billion, surpassing those of Morgan Stanley and within touching distance of Goldman Sachs.
Hans India
3 days ago
- Hans India
Punjab police foil major terror plot, cache of arms recovered
Chandigarh: Punjab police on Wednesday said they have foiled a major terror plot orchestrated by Pakistan-based terrorist Harwinder Rinda and recovered a cache of arms from a forest area in Gurdaspur. Preliminary investigation has found that the consignment was pushed into India by Pakistani agencies and Rinda as part of a premeditated plan to carry out attacks at multiple locations in Punjab, Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said. 'In an intelligence-led operation, the Anti-Gangster Task Force (#AGTF), Punjab successfully foiled a major terror plot orchestrated by Harwinder Rinda, a Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) operative based in #Pakistan and backed by Pakistan's ISI,' Yadav posted on X. The DGP said acting swiftly on human intelligence, AGTF teams traced and recovered a large cache of terrorist hardware, including two AK-47 rifles with 16 live cartridges, two magazines, and two P-86 (high explosive) hand grenades from a forest area in Gurdaspur, before it could reach Harwinder Rinda's associates. 'Preliminary investigation reveals the recovered consignment was pushed into India by Pakistani agencies and Harwinder @ Rinda as part of a premeditated plan to carry out attacks at multiple locations in Punjab, aiming to disrupt public peace,' he said. An FIR under the Explosives Act and the Arms Act has been registered at Purana Shala police station in Gurdaspur, he said. 'Further investigations are underway to identify and apprehend Rinda's operatives involved in the recovered weapon consignment,' the DGP said.
