For Hilsa lovers in north Bengal, the delicacy’s distance from the river to the plate just got shorter. Hilsa, which was never found in rivers in sub-Himalayan Bengal, is filling up the fishermen’s net in Alipurduar district – the rare catch being attributed to an abundance in the Brahmaputra. Over the past few week, Hilsa is being caught in the Mahananda and Ganga in Malda district. The fish has been netted even in the Kaljani, Dima and Gadadhar rivers, tributaries of the Brahmaputra. “All these rivers flow into the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. This year, there has been an abundance of ilish in the Brahmaputra and so, shoals of the fish might have entered the tributaries and swum upstream,” said Kiranlal Das, the deputy director of the fisheries department in Alipurduar. Fish retailers here said on Tuesday that a good quantity of hilsa had been caught in the past seven days. “We had never heard of or seen hilsa in our rivers before. These days, at least 50kg of hilsa is being caught from the rivers a day,” said a fish-seller in Alipurduar. Subhashish Kundu, an Alipurduar resident who lives close to the Kaljani river, said: “After I learnt that hilsa is being caught in the Kaljani, I visited the river bank a couple of times and found the fish squirming in the net. It was a rare sight to see a live hilsa in Alipurduar.” It was about a fortnight ago that hilsa was caught from the Teesta at Tatipara, on the outskirts of Jalpaiguri. Officials of the district fisheries department confirmed that the fish caught was hilsa. “We have no earlier records of hilsa being found in the Teesta,” an official said. The glut of the local hilsa has triggered a drop in prices in Alipurduar. Hilsa-lovers are making a beeline for the fish at Rs 300 a kg. “I have bought and tasted the hilsa caught from the rivers in our district. The fish is fresh and is being sold at Rs 300 a kilo, which is quite cheaper,” said Ranjan Pal, an Alipurduar resident. Each fish caught in the Alipurduar rivers weighs around 500-700gm.