Poachers in Nerupur near Pennsylvania in the Damapuri region were believed to have killed an elephant because its tusks killed the elephant and then fired the body to destroy the evidence.
The incident occurred on March 1, 2025. It has raised serious concerns about the movement of poachers in the area and departmental mistakes over such blatant hunting examples, along an important hallway of large-scale elephants in the Dharmapuri area.
He stumbled upon the body of an elephant at around 6:15 a.m. after investigating the burning body of the Bathanavaady Reserve Forest in Bathanavaady Reserve Forest in Emanur Reserve, according to a report filed by the Munsif-cum Judicial Court in Lam, Pennsylvania. The guard said he then rushed to the anti-poaching camp in Nerupur to inform his superiors.
It is worth noting that information about the discovery of ivory or tushes of elephants that occur at the time of discovery was missing from the initial report.
The activists working in the area also stressed that the forest department’s report to the magistrate judge did not specify the gender of the elephant and that other details of their investigation were not leaked to the court. The details they said “as the report submitted on March 4 three days after the incident also did not mention “search for any bullets”.
The body of the adult elephant believed to be between the ages of 7 and 10 was found on the interstate border, where the Cauvery river divides Tamil Nadu from Karnataka.
“The trunk is chopped, not the head. The trunk – the front of the head is chopped, as it is like a tooth,” said a source from the Forest Department. When asked if the elephant was shot, the source said: “The sub-adult body was burned, which made it difficult for the metal detector to pick up any bullet residue on what was left of the body. We had to cut the body into parts to try to pick up any metal residue, but couldn’t do it.”
When contacted, district forest official K. Rajangam (Dharmapuri Forest department) said three special teams were working with police to track the defendants in the case. Mr Rajangam said we also sent samples from postmortem to the Advanced Institute of Wildlife Conservation to determine the gender of the animals. During the incident, he was checking the call records from the scene that occurred, from the scene and about five kilometers.
“This is a very serious incident that we are investigating, including whether elephants are hunted by ivory,” the DFO said. The department is considering strengthening the surveillance network in the area, including establishing anti-poaching camps to prevent such instances from appearing repeatedly.
The incident shows that while the High Court constitutes a special investigation team (SIT) to monitor investigations into wildlife poaching, poaching remains an addressable issue, militants say. Such incidents have occurred due to the increasing demand for illegally purchased wildlife products.
Former chief wildlife warden and former transportation director Shekhar Kumar Niraj said it was not uncommon for poachers to resort to burning elephants’ bodies. During the early 1990s, during the peak of Indian elephant poaching, poachers burned elephant carcasses, including Masinagudi. He said it is necessary to strengthen intelligence networks with local communities in such landscapes to better share information between local residents and the Ministry of Forests.
Mr Niraj added that due to the growing demand for elephant ivory and the illegal trade in wildlife, the Ministry of Forests needs to develop new strategies to combine ground intelligence collection with new technologies to minimize poaching.
When contacted by Wildlife Warden Chief Rakesh Kumar Dogra, information about the alleged poaching was not immediately released because the department did not want to “eliminate” the investigation process and potentially cut the suspects.
Mr Dogra said the department is conducting a thorough investigation and explores all potential clients with the help of local police to identify the defendants.
publishing – March 6, 2025 at 07:34 pm
