“A rhino horn has supreme value only when it is intact to the living rhino. These horns have no value,” Assam’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said during the ceremony in the town of Bokakhat.
“With today’s action, Assam wants to send two messages — that we don’t believe that rhino horns have any medicinal value and that we only believe in preserving the living rhinos.”
The town is near the UNESCO-listed heritage site Kaziranga National Park, home to more than 2,000 one-horned rhinos — the world’s biggest population.
At the ceremony, horns were carefully placed in layers in several large furnaces before being set alight, sending plumes of smoke into the air above fierce orange flames.