Before the Honorable President of India

Sub:  Anymore Tranquilization is too dangerous to Arikomban the wild elephant's life.

An elephant named 'Arikomban' was born and brought up at the reserve forest of Chinnakanal, Idukki district of Kerala state, India.  The Chinnakanal reserve forest area (especially the elephant corridors) has been heavily encroached.  

The Government also rehabilitated landless poor people at the elephant's habitat, out of these 301 families 7 families are still living there, 40 families have their land still there and all others have left the place.

 

Many elephants were tranquilized and kept in captivity.  Arikomban is an intelligent elephant and it became a threat to the private parties who encroached the forest land.  Thus they decided to capture the elephant and they prepared a list of 7-14 deaths and charged it upon him with the support of wildlife warden.  

 

In 2013, the elephant was given tranquilizer via projectile injection, but the elephant escaped to the deep forest.

 

In 2017, a second attempt to capture the elephant was done and the elephant was tranquilized via projectile injection and the elephant again escaped into the deep forest.

 

In 2023, On  April 29th and on June 5th the elephant was tranquilized twice within 35 days of time span.

 

In 2023 April 29th, the elephant was tranquilized with a double strong tranquilizer prepared by Dr. Arun Zachariah by mixing up of two type of tranquilizers together.  The elphant was projectile injected 6 doses initially at around 11. 46 a.m. and loaded him into the truck with the assistance of 4 kumki elephants.  The live telecast visuals shows evidently that the elephant suffered a lot of physical attacks and mental trauma during this capture.

 

On the way to the relocation area, the mission team applied many more doses (numbers are still unknown) throughout the travel.  They kept the elephant under their custody until next day morning at around 5.15 a.m.

 

The first relocation area was Periyar Tiger Reserve.  The medias were restricted 2 kilometers away from the Tiger reserve and until now no details about what happened from that point in time to the releasing events are published by the mission team.

 

As the elephant was spotted in Kambam Theni District of Tamilnadu, the elephant was again tranquilized and translocated to a 300 kilometers away to Upper kodayar Dam area.  The wild elphant was tranquilized at midnight at 12.30 a.m. and released in the next day at 2.30 p.m.  The wild elephant was forced to stand up inside the lorry continuously for about 37 hours without food and water.  The transporting videos reveals that the elephant was too tired and tried to sit down and the man who was standing near by the elephant had beaten him to make the wild elephant to stand up.  The atmospheric temperature was too high and the wild elephant had undergone intolerable cruelty physically and submitted to severe mental trauma.  During this capturing and transporting, the wild elephant was injured to his leg also.  At the cumbam Town, the trunk injury seemed to be healed.

 

The Arikomban elephant is included in the category of relocated elephants who tries to come back to its native forest.   As he is not able to bear any more tranquilization, it is our submission that the protective guards will assist the wild elephant to come back to its native forest by providing necessary arrangements to avoid any difficulty to the residential areas.

 

The wild elephant has been relocated twice to two different strange forest areas.  Due to the unfamiliarity there is a chance existing that the wild elephant may reach to the residential area while it travels in search of food and water.  It is necessary to appoint forest guards to monitor him closely and to help him to go back to the forest if he reaches to the residential areas.

 

Prayer:

 

Majority of Kerala Public is very much worried about the life of this wild elephant and we fear that any more tranquilization will affect severely the health of the wild elephant and will be life threatening too.

 

1.  It is most respectfully submitted that considering the above mentioned incidents, as the wild elephant was tranquilized 4 times and the recent two tranquilizations/dartings  were done within 35 days of time frame, please be kind enough to issue an order not to tranquilize the wild elephant anymore and to appoint forest guards for 24 hours to watch him closely and push him back to the forest if it tries to go to residential area.

 

2.  Please take necessary steps to pave the way without blocking when the wild elephant himself comes to his native forest.

 

3. Please issue an order to provide day to day updates on his health and food conditions to the public with video evidence to alleviate the mental trauma of Arikomban loving public.