NEW DELHI: Bizarre as it would seem, a forty-year-old domestic elephant’s head was chopped off and its trunk hacked away for its tusks at Kaladi in Kerala’s Ernakulam district on Sunday, reports reaching here today said.The elephant, Arun Parameshwaran, said to have had the largest tusks in the area, was killed with a poisoned pineapple by miscreants in the wee hours of Sunday. The elephant did not offer any resistance since the poison acted fast. This is the first ever instance of killing of a tame elephant for tusks anywhere in South India. The poachers, however, failed to take the tusks. The body was sent to Thodupuzha for post mortem.

The elephant had returned to Kaladai on Saturday from the Vappalasheri Shri Krishnaswami temple festival. The first mahout, Ravi, returned home early that day while the second, Tangappan, slept in the shed some distance away since it was raining.

Reacting strongly to the incident, the Executive Director of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), Mr Vivek Menon, said, “While attacking soft targets is quite the norm in wildlife crime, killing domestic elephants is a new development in Southern India. In the early 90s, a few domestic elephants were killed for their ivory in the Northeast and rhino horns looted from government treasuries. This coincided with an upsurge in poaching as people came up with opportunistic methods to make money.”

“In the wake of the CITES decision to allow limited trade of ivory from Africa, such incidents, as the one in Kerala must be seen as possible beginnings of a poaching upsurge and not just as one-off incidents. This precautionary principle will help state governments to be on the alert and any leads to be followed up at this stage so as to prevent future calamities,” Mr Menon cautioned.

Dr Abraham Tharagan, a tranquilisation expert, said the elephant was given a potent poison which was laced in the pineapple found next to the body of the elephant. “Had the poachers got about 15 minutes more, they would have taken the tusks also,” said the forest department officials present.

Advocate TN Arunkumar, the owner of the elephant, is the Perumbavur municipal council vice-chairman. Arunkumar owns two other elephants and had purchased Arun Parameshwaran only eight months back.

Forest officials felt that the miscreants involved may have tailed the elephant for a few days to note its habits before carrying out this gruesome act. They said only only experts could have carried out the act since as the tusks were nearly completely exposed. There may have been four or more people involved, Mr BN Nagaraj, forest officer.

Picture courtesy : Mathrubhumi