Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Thursday suspended the state government's order to tranquillize and catch a wild bull elephant known as "Arikomban," which was known to raid ration stores and homes in search of its favourite food, rice.
Two animal rights organizations, People for Animals (PFA), Trivandrum Chapter and the Walking Eye Foundation for Animal Advocacy, filed the PIL. Justices A K Jayasankaran Nambiar and Gopinath P, in a special late-night sitting, issued the direction.
The bench stayed till March 29 the Chief Wildlife Warden’s (CWW) order to tranquilise and capture the tusker but allowed the forest department officials to track the elephant till that date, advocate Bhanu Thilak, who appeared for the petitioner organisations, said.
The petitioner organisations, represented by Thilak and Prasanth S R, claimed in their plea that CWW’s order was “illegal and unscientific”.
They contended that under the order, authorised as ‘Operation Arikomban’, to tranquilise and capture the 40-year-old elephant which roams around Chinnakanal and nearby places in the Idukki district of Kerala and to keep it under captivity at Kodanad elephant camp.
“The said order has not been published in the gazette yet and is being dealt with in confidentiality and secrecy by the authorities concerned. The order passed by the Chief Wildlife Warden suffers from patent illegality and the same is unscientific and is against the spirit of the law in existence,” their joint plea said.
They contended before the bench that the welfare of the animal and a scientific approach was paramount while passing orders intending to tranquilise and move the animal from a particular place.
The petitioners’ have urged the court to issue an order directing the state government and its forest department to translocate and rehabilitate Arikomban to an alternate deep forest using scientific methods causing minimum trauma to it in the event of tranquilising and capturing it.
They have also urged the court to direct the state not to keep the tusker in captivity in the elephant cage at Kodanad. The court will hear the matter again on March 29.
With PTI inputs