Supreme Court Orders Confiscation of Traders’ Ivory Stocks

New Delhi, August 27: In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court of India today asked the government to take possession of all ivory stocks lying with traders in the country. According to official estimates traders have at least 20 tons of ivory, in carved and raw form, worth millions of dollars.

The judgement delivered by the bench, which included Chief Justice V.N. Khare, and Justices Y.K. Sabharwal and S.B. Sinha, dismissed the traders’ decade long demands that they be allowed to clear the stocks lying with them following the ban on sale, import and export of ivory.

The judges upheld the 1997 order of the High Court of Delhi, which the traders had appealed against, and ordered the government to take possession of the entire stock, including mammoth ivory and products made thereof. The court also ordered that idols and images of gods made out of ivory should be kept in museums reflecting Indian traditions and culture.

A Tusker

“ I am extremely happy with this judgement. The long battle which began in 1991 has finally ended today finishing the legal ivory trade in India,” Ashok Kumar, senior advisor and trustee, Wildlife Trust of India said. “This stock lying with the traders had become a cover for poaching tuskers.”

The trade in Indian (Asian) ivory had been banned in 1986, but the trade in imported ivory had continued till the 1991 amendment of the Wildlife Protection Act of India. Ivory traders had challenged the amendment in the Delhi High Court and though initially they were able to obtain a stay order, the stay was vacated in the same year. The government had then contended that under the guise of imported ivory, traders were dealing in Indian ivory obtained from tuskers poached in India.

In a 48 page landmark judgement issued in 1997, the Delhi High Court had dismissed the petition of ivory traders saying: " It is very important to sound a clear message that it will no longer be remunerative to deal in ivory, not even for the purpose of one time sale. It also needs to be driven home that the beauty of ivory and things created therefrom should not be the reason for the destruction of its source. The elephant with the tusks stands out any day to ivory curios adorning the mantle pieces of a few who can afford to buy them at fabulous prices unmindful of the virtual disappearance of a remarkable animal. This is a very heavy price to pay for satiating the aesthetic sense of a few persons".

Some intricately carved ivory bangles

The ivory traders appealed against this order in the Supreme Court, which delivered the landmark judgement today after a series of hearings. In fact, the Wildlife Trust of India had filed a petition in the Supreme Court in December 2002 voicing concern against the stock of ivory lying with the erstwhile traders. The WTI petition was also heard along with the appeal of the traders.

During the 1991 hearing in the Delhi High Court, two of the founder trustees of WTI, Mr. Ashok Kumar and Mr. Vivek Menon played a significant role in the court, offering evidence that the traders were selling ivory carvings to foreign buyers. They also pointed out a devious modus-operandi by which the foreign buyers were shown large and intricate ivory carvings, with a promise to deliver duplicates across the border in Nepal. These were the very carvings that the High Court had banned the traders from selling.