navi mumbai the state forest officials from nagothane range in raigad district of maharashtra arrested six persons for possessing an adult leopards skin which the accused were also attempting to sell in the area on tuesday nighttalking to toi the range forest officer rfo of nagothane kiran thakur said we had got specific information that some men were moving around suspiciously with the skin of a wild animal in nagothane on intercepting the accused persons we found that they had the skin of a leopard they also confessed that the leopard was recently poached from a forest area and so they were trying to sell the skinall the accused persons in this group led by one local identified as ramchandra hirwe have been remanded to the custody of forest department till this saturday by a local court where they were produced after being arrested under the indian wildlife protection act 1972this is good work carried out by the forest department personnel in nabbing those responsible for destroying wildlife and doing unlawful trading leopard is a schedule1 protected species under the wildlife protection act and hence killing it in order to sell its body parts is a very serious wildlife crime stringent punishment should be given to such wildlife offenders said a citybased wildlife activist r jadhav