Thiruvananthapuram:
One man has been arrested and two have been detained for questioning by a joint investigating team of the police and forest departments in connection with the suspected killing of a pregnant elephant in Kerala’s Palakkad that has triggered widespread outrage in the state and outside.
The 15-year-old elephant died after chewing on a pineapple stuffed with crackers, according to initial reports, but the latest autopsy conducted on her found it was a coconut, and the injuries she suffered were at least two weeks old.
The arrested man, identified as P Wilson, is an employee of an estate that cultivates cash crops and spices on the fringes of the Silent Valley National Park, who told investigators that he prepared such snares to check crop-raiding wild boars. Two people who Wilson said had ordered him to prepare such snares have been detained for questioning.
“More arrests will take place soon,” said Kerala’s forest minister. K Raju.
Union environment minister Prakash Javedkar has announced another probe by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, which has also begun its investigation.
The elephant’s painful death came to light on May 27 when forest officer Mohan Krishnan wrote a Facebook post after witnessing it. After biting the cracker-filled coconut, the elephant rushed to the nearby Velliyar river in the Silent Valley rain forest and stood there for days with her trunk and head immersed in the water to nurse its injuries.
Forest officials rushed to save the jumbo after local people alerted them, but she succumbed to her injuries on May 27 and during post-mortem it was found to be pregnant. Later, local people said the jumbo was around the river for more than a week.
By that time she died, the animal had been enfeebled, perhaps because it was not able to consume food or water because of the injuries inflicted by the blast. Later, local people said the jumbo was around the river for more than a week.
Elephants are much adored in Kerala, and caparisoned pachyderms re an integral part of festivals and big public celebrations in the state. They are also a feature of Kerala’s biggest cultural festival, Thrissur Pooram, in which one hundred-odd elephants take part along with an ensemble of percussion instrument players.
The incident also highlighted growing man-animal conflict in Kerala, where, in 2018-19, 24 people were killed by wild elephants and 12 died in tiger attacks. Home to many wildlife parks and reserves, the state has 5,706 elephants, according to a 2019 census. The state has 720 domesticated elephants, too, most of them owned by temples.
The death of the elephant in Palakkad acquired a political and communal colour after some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders including Maneka Gandhi, an animal rights campaigner, commented on the incident. Maneka Gandhi, inadvertently, said the animal had died in Malappuram, a Muslim-majority district she described as the most violent in the country, although the death took place in Palakkad.
Many film artistes including Tovino Thomas, Ashiq Abu and others began an online campaign “#I stand with Malappuram.”
“It is sad some people are venting their anger without verifying where exactly it took place. It exposes their communal intention,” said P K Kunhalikuty, the Muslim League MP who represents Malappuram, adding that such comments were an insult to the people of his constituency. Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan also condemned “the move to communalise an unfortunate incident.”
Wildlife activists said this was not first elephant death of its kind. In April, another female elephant died in Kollam in south Kerala after she bit into a cracker-filled water melon. Two years ago, a tusker died in Idukki after swallowing jaggery-coated explosives, they said. Usually in such cases, it is difficult to pinpoint the offenders as elephants travel long distances in search of food and water, they said, adding most such cases remain unnatural deaths only on paper.
Source: HindustanTimes