Summary:
CHENNAI: Sad news for fans of 25-year-old crop raiding tusker Chinna Thambi as the Madras high court on Wednesday permitted the state government to capture the elephant The authorities are permitted to capture the elephant considering the safety of the public. Even when it goes near shrubs and bushes to rest, it stays within 20-50 metres of people and ignores when large number of people make noise around it,” Desai said in his report. Instead, it kept walking through villages and agricultural areas as if they were its natural habitat… It is completely habituated to human beings as it does not react to people even when they are within 15-20 feet of it. Many elephants intrude into human habitats, but they always run back into the forest when driven or disturbed by people.“Chinna Thambi, on the other hand, did not bother to go back into the forest when it first came out or when the authorities tried to drive it back into the forest. The decision whether to keep the tusker in an elephant camp or to leave it in the forest would be taken later, a division bench of Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad said.When the plea was taken up for hearing, advocate-general Vijay Narayan submitted that it was imperative to capture the elephant as efforts to drive it into the forest had failed.This apart, relying on the opinion provided by elephant conservationist Ajay Desai , the advocate general submitted that the elephant is completely habituated to human beings and has grown in an abnormal situation where it considers human habitations as part of its normal range.The issue pertains to two PILs – one seeking direction to the authorities not to capture the tusker and tame it as a kumki, the other plea wanted the authorities to capture the elephant and send it to a state-run elephant camp.In his report, Desai said it is very clear that the elephant does not distinguish between forests and human habitations..