According to reports, three middlemen have been arrested inthe city for attempting to sell deer antlers or horns procured at Rs 5 lakh.
"We have arrested Sundaresh, Manjunath and Raghavendrafor attempting to sell two deer antlers," said Central Crime Branch (CCB)Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Kuldeep Jain to IANS.
"To lure the customers, the accused made a video aboutthe antlers and told stories that grinding a small part of the antler intopower and drinking with water will heal some ailment or their mere presencewould bring luck and so on," said Jain.
A case has been registered against all the three under theWildlife Act and the accused will be handed over to the forest department.
It is presently unknown where the accused procured theantlers as they claim that they received them from some forest sources.
Police got a tip-off that the three was trying to sell the antlersto a prospective buyer in Yeshwantpur area in the city.
Both the deer horns, one of which is a complete set withboth the horns and other one a smaller one, were being quoted a price of Rs 5lakh and weighing approximately 2 kg.
The bigger horn weighed 1.3 kg and the smaller one 270gm.
Though the police would also want to contact the buyers, theDCP said it may not be easy because all of them would have backed off after thethree arrests.
The police are unsure which part of Karnataka forests theseantlers came from. Jain said the forest department may know a thing or twoabout such intricacies.
"The antlers have already changed several hands andwere in the penultimate hands of the middlemen before being passed on to abuyer," pointed out Jain.
Police seized a Toyota Innova and three mobile phones fromthe wildlife offenders.