Cherambadi Forest Range in Tamil Nadu’s Gudalur has turned out to be a graveyard for wild animals as an elephant, four wild boars, two mongooses and a cobra died after being electrocuted when they came into contact with a live wire deep inside the forests. The high tension wires were  installed by the State owned Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Company (TANGEDCO) to distribute power to tea estates in the region.

“It is a sad and shocking  incident. The eight-year old tusker came into cotact with the stay wire and electrocuted. Other animals could have come to feed on the carcass of the pachyderm and died,” said G Ramakrishnan, Range Forest Officer, Gudalur. He said the department authorities were in the dark about the exact time and date on which the mishap occurred. “We came across the dead bodies of the animals by Wednesday and sent  the same for post mortem,” said Ramakrishnan.

Forest officials in Gudalur led by Ramakrishnan were working overtime  to turn back a mother elephant from the carcass of her month old calf in the Gudalur Forests. The calf wule grazing with its mother and other members opf the herd had accidentally fallen into a swamp and died.

The mother elephant and her friends stood guard to the carcass for four days and scared away the forest officials who tried to remove the body of the calf from the swamp.

 “We succeeded in dispersing the elephant herd including the mother from the spot. Our main concern was the possibilities of the elephants developing infection from the carcass. It was after the elephants returned to the forests we were alerted about the electrocution,” said Ramakrishnan.

Cherambadi was in the news last year when many elephants had come out of the  reserve forests when they faced acute shortage of drinking water  and food.