Hundreds of women farmers, under the aegis of the Vadakkanad Grama Samrakshana Samiti, a forum of farmers at Vadakkanad village near Sulthan Bathery, took out a gagged march to launch the second phase of their indefinite hunger strike in front of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary office on Monday seeking protection from wild animal attacks.
The farmers said that they had been leading a wretched life due to attacks by wild animals.
A tusker, locally known as Vadakkanad Komban, had been causing panic among the villagers for the past many months and two days ago, a farmer had a narrow escape from the animal, they said.
The tusker, aged about 25 years, had been identified as a regular crop raider in the Sulthan Bathery and Kurichyad forest ranges. It was fixed with a radio collar telemeter on March 12 after a mass protest by villagers. But the animal reappeared in the area the next day.
Vain efforts
Later, the forest officials tried to drive away the tusker to interior forests with the help of trained elephants and using rubber bullets. But all the efforts were in vain.
The farmers in the area had staged a hunger fast in front of the office on March 17 raising the same demands. They concluded the 11-day fast after a ministerial-level meeting held in Thiruvananthapuram on March 27 had promised them that the animal would be translocated, Jyothi Suresh and Vijaya Narayanan, two protesters, said.
The officials said on April 18, after a sit in protest by I.C. Balakrishnan, MLA, that they would translocate the animal within 10 days. But the tusker was still posing a serious threat to the life and property of people, they said.
“We will continue the fast till the Forest Department officials issued an order to translocate the tusker,” they said.
