HC forms 3 member committee to examine male elephant calf

Madras High Court today constituted a three-member expert committee to examine a male elephant calf lodged in a kraal (wooden enclosure) in an elephant camp in Coimbatore district to take a decision on taming it.
The committee, comprising Dr Rajiv, Head, Elephant center of Excellence, Mannuthy, Kerala, Dr Arun Zakaria, Wildlife veterinarian,Kerala Veterinary College and Ajay Desai,elephant scientist, should file a joint report on it's health condition psychological state and possibility of rehabilitation,it said.
The division bench, comprising Justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Sundar constituted the committee after going through the report filed by the forest department.
Apart from this case, the committee should also come up with suggestions on framing Standard Operating Procedures/ protocols not only for treatment of such animals in future but also rehabilitating them, the bench said.

"The state shall bear the cost to be incurred by the committee. The report shall be filed as early as possible and in any case not beyond four weeks.It is open to the counsel to make a mention if the report gets ready much earlier,"it said.
The matter relates to a PIL filed by one Prema Veeraraghavan that the calf was only three years old, had not killed or attacked any human and that the Chief Wild Life Warden, whose duty it is to protect endangered wildlife, "has taken such a reckless decision" to capture and tame it.

The petitioner submitted that the calf, from Mankarai forest, had strayed into a residential area at the foothills of Aththikadavu forest and was captured by forest officials.

They should have helped it reunite with its herd, but had released it into Aththikadavu forest atop a hill 33 km away from Mankarai, Prema alleged.
The petitioner submitted that the calf returned to the village as it could not locate its herd, that the officials captured it once again and shifted it to Varagaliar elephant camp in Coimbatore district.
The petitioner filed the PIL on a April 23 2017 report in an English daily titled 'Captured elephant calf lodged in kraal."
When the matter was taken up today, petitioner's counsel alleged that the Forest Department 'very much intented' taming the calf and they captured it and sent it to forest. It was unable to locate its mother.

The bench then orally observed that "there is a procedure on how to rehabilitate and treat abandoned animals and we will constitute an expert committee."
It then named those who would constitute the committee.