The Kerala Forest Department has launched an internal investigation into the failure of its officials to take timely action on information about elephant-poaching in the Idamalayar-Vazhachal forest region in central Kerala. Confessions by an accomplice of poachers and the department’s own inquiries suggest that poachers could have killed 20 to 25 wild elephants for tusks in the region in the past one-and-a-half years.
On Monday, Forest Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan assured the State Assembly that stringent measures would be taken to curb elephant poaching. A meeting of the Forest Ministers of the South Indian States would be held in the first week of August to discuss the steps to be taken for ensuring that no poaching takes place, he said.
Two persons have already been arrested in connection with the poaching incidents. The Forest Department had on Saturday suspended three officials on the basis of a report of the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Vigilance) for indirectly facilitating the escape of the poachers.
The officials had also failed in informing the Forest Minister about this serious matter even after getting clear information on it. It is also alleged that the officials in the Forest Department headquarters had not taken timely action. The Minister said stringent action would be taken against erring officials on the basis of a probe.
Forest officials had last week found the carcasses of five wild elephants in the Thundathil and Malayattur Forest divisions in searches carried out on the basis of the information provided by KD Kunjumon (62), who had accompanied the poachers’ gang as a cook on their hunting expeditions between June and September last year.
The officials had concluded that the carcasses were of elephants killed in the past one-and-a-half years. The department has collected samples and sent them for forensic examination. A massive search involving 400 Forest Department personnel and watchers is presently on in the region. Sources in the Forest Department said that the current case concerned perhaps the worst elephant poaching incident in the State since 1990s.
According to reports, Kunjumon, a former forest watcher, had handed over vital information to the officials as early as on June 21. He had showed them the shed put up by the poachers during their hunting expedition but the officials refused to believe him and concluded that the shed could have been built by tribespeople.
Kunjumon, who reported the killing of seven wild tuskers, had even given the department the details of the seven-member poachers’ gang, including their mobile phone numbers, but the officials reportedly closed the case saying that the Kerala Police’s cyber cell had refused to help them trace the numbers.
The poachers would first kill the elephants during the hunting expedition and return after a month to collect the tusks, a report quoted Kunjumon as saying. The ivory thus collected was being sold to a native of Thiruvananthapuram, he said. The poachers had paid Kunjumon Rs.57,000 for accompanying them five times on their expeditions.
According to him, the poachers had hunted elephants at least in seven areas which came under the Vazhachal Forest Division. The gang was also involved in elephant-poaching in the Munnar region and even in the forests of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka but he had not accompanied them there, Kunjumon told the officials.