Forest Department officials have recovered 24 monitor lizards packed into five sacks in Khagrachhari town, 14 of them dead. Acting on a tip-off, they raided Chengis Square in the town at 9:30pm on Wednesday and recovered the animals from a woman.

Farid Mia, divisional forest officer in Khagrachhari, said the raid was conducted through the district administration's mobile court and that the woman had collected the lizards to sell. He also said the animals had been brought in from Feni district.

Local journalists said the woman is a resident of Kuradia Chhara village in Panchhari upazila. She was held at Khagrachhari Sadar police station on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning a case was filed against her in court under the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2026.

The forest officer described what happened to the animals afterwards. "Ten live monitor lizards have been released into the natural forest at Alutila. And the 14 that died have been buried there so that the environment is not spoiled," Md Farid Mia told BBC Bangla. Videos circulating on social media showed the lizards inside sacks with their legs and tails tied with rope.

He also explained why they had been caught. "Local people here eat monitor lizard meat. They were collected mainly for eating," Mr Mia said.

The monitor lizard is not a rare animal. Specialists say it is seen constantly in the forests, scrub and farmland of Bangladesh — wherever there is a little scrub, a pond or a river. Despite the Bengali name guishap, it is not a snake at all.

Professor Dr Md Niyamul Naser of the zoology department at the University of Dhaka told BBC Bangla that it is a lizard-type animal, a four-legged member of the reptile group, known in English as the monitor lizard. Three species are found in Bangladesh, he said, and the Bengal monitor lizard is the one most commonly found in the hill districts. The animal helps keep rats and insects in check on farmland.

Source: BBC Bangla