One Of India’s Most Wanted Poachers, Who Ate Bear Penises, Just Got Caught

In a recent breakthrough, the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department's Special Task Force have caught one of India’s most wanted wildlife poachers.

The man named Yarlen, who has been on the run for six years, was notorious for his fetish for bear penises.

Wildlife officials started a hunt for Yarlen in 2013 after multiple carcasses of sloth bears were found without their penises. His fetish landed him on the wanted list of multiple Indian states.

After being caught in 2014 with his uncle, Yarlen jumped bail and had disappeared since, until now. He was tracked down by the MP Special Investigation Team to a shanty on the Gujarat-Vadodara highway.

Yarlen allegedly belongs to a community that believes sloth bear penises can cure various illnesses, including impotency. He allegedly said that he would eat the reproductive organs of the bears as they are the best aphrodisiacs.

Sloth bears are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List as “vulnerable.”

A Madhya Pradesh forest department official told AFP, "He's jumped bail earlier and fudged documents. Over the years, he has taken on several names as well, the latest being Jasrat." He also said that Yarlen would sell the gallbladders of the bears to businessmen across India. In certain communities, gallbladders and reproductive organs of sloth bears are thought to cure cancer, asthma and chronic pain among other illnesses. Bear bile, a digestive fluid secreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, is coveted by some in China and other Asian countries, where it’s marketed as a cure for everything from hangovers to cancer.

Yarlen is also being investigated for killing a tigress that disappeared from the Pench Reserve in Madhya Pradesh in 2012. The skin of the tigress, T13, was found a year later in Nepal. Yarlen confessed to killing the tigress during interrogation.

The man was found with several Aadhaar cards and three fake voter IDs. He told officials that he became a poacher at 15, and since then has killed multiple tigers, sloth bears and hundreds of wild boars and peacocks.

Throughout the years he had disappeared, Yarlen was jumping from village to village. He avoided getting caught by bribing the village leaders with the wild boards he would catch.

Call records of Yarlen proved that he was working with Delhi-based agents who are known for being major suppliers of tiger skin and bones to China, Tibet and some western countries.

About 75 percent of the world’s tigers live in India, with Madhya Pradesh having the most within the country. India committed to doubling its tiger population by 2022, but in revealing last year's tiger census, it has done so four years early.

Find Edoardo on Twitter and Instagram.