A 2019 Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) report has highlighted serious oversights on the part of the Tamil Nadu Forest Department in investigating elephant poaching cases in a number of districts, including the Nilgiris and Coimbatore.
The report, a copy of which is with The Hindu, details instances of underreporting of poaching cases, registering of cases in the Coimbatore division in a “casual and careless manner”, failure to include the names of the main accused in the cases filed, including ivory traders and middlemen, poor investigation practices and follow-ups for over a decade.
The WCCB investigated the cases in Megamalai, Valparai, the Sigur Range and Kotagiri in the Nilgiris, Sirumugai and Mettupalayam in Coimbatore and also the forest ranges in Theni in 2015. Based on the WCCB report, tusks have been collected from poachers in many parts of the Nilgiri biosphere reserve, including Kotagiri, Kallar, Bhavani and Coonoor.
“For the murder of three elephants at three different times by the same accused person, only one case was registered against them [sic] in the Sigur range of the Coimbatore division,” reads a portion of the report submitted to the Madras High Court. “…suggestions for rectifying the same was communicated to the Tamil Nadu Forest Department. However, the main accused, one Aji Bright, who bought the entire ivory...more than 300 kg from Tamil Nadu, was not at all included in any of the cases,” the report states.
The WCCB has also identified key businessmen, industrialists and entrepreneurs from across India who are known to have purchased ivory, obtained through poaching, from the key accused identified by it.
One of the accused arrested in Sigur told the WCCB that he had killed eight elephants. The WCCB states that based on his testimony, at least eight cases should have been registered. “On the contrary, the cases registered by the Tamil Nadu Forest Department is nowhere near the quantity of ivory traded,” the report adds.
According to conservationists, the State’s elephant population has declined dramatically from over 4,000 Asian elephants in 2012 to less than 2,800 in 2017, based on the reply to a question under the Right to Information Act from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in 2022. The number of unnatural elephant deaths does not tally with the huge decrease in the elephant population, conservationists say.
The report was prepared and submitted in 2019. Activists, including Sharath Babu, a wildlife activist from Karnataka, have voiced concerns over the formation of a four-member committee to look into the elephant deaths in Tamil Nadu over the last year by the Forest Department. The committee comprises three Indian Forest Service officers, including one of the rank of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, and just one member of a non-governmental organisation from Coimbatore.
“The officers who were in charge when the alleged oversights were committed by the Forest Department while investigating the cases have been included as members of the committee, which on paper, does not seem to be impartial...,” Mr. Babu said.
Another conservationist from the Nilgiris questioned the rationale behind the Forest Department forming a committee to probe the elephant deaths when the High Court had already ordered the formation of a special investigation team. “The only way to ensure transparency in this probe is to make sure that an independent third-party organisation, or an SIT as recommended by the High Court, looks into this issue. The Forest Department itself has been indicted by the WCCB report for failing to properly investigate these deaths,” added the conservationist.
When contacted, Syed Muzammil Abbas, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, refused to comment on the report. “I do not want to comment on this issue,” he told The Hindu.
