3 yrs, 100 tigers killed & counting: new-age poaching mafia taps tech, digital payments, hawala networks

Investigators from five states, four Central agencies, and the Interpol; three nationwide alerts; two critical meetings of chief wildlife wardens; over a dozen arrests in five states this year alone; and, a syndicate spread across the country's tiger map. If the usual suspects in poaching are subsistence hunters, touts scouting forest settlements to fix deals and impoverished "carriers" in small towns sneaking skin and bones in polythene sacks on trains and buses, think again. A poaching network marked by an unusual coalition of groups from tribal communities in central India, using digital payments with "hawala funds" and separate supply lines…