The forest department on Tuesday informed the Madras High Court that five stray spotted deer on the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) campus in Adyar here had died during the lockdown period due to various reasons.
Appearing before a Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha, Special Government Pleader (Forests) S.V. Vijay Prashanth said two of the five deer had died due to dog bite.
One deer had died because of eating plastics and one more had drunk sewage water. The carcass of another deer was found in a decomposed state, the judges were informed.
The submissions were made during the hearing of a public interest litigation petition filed by activist S. Muralidharan last year against the department's move to translocate the stray deer on the CLRI campus to zoos and forests.
The court had in December last permitted the forest officials to go ahead with the translocation of deer from CLRI as well as Indian Institute of Technology- Madras after framing guidelines for trapping the animals using scientific means.
The permission was granted after it was represented that 497 spotted deer had died in the city in the last five years due to electric lines, stray dogs, pollution, solid waste intake, drinking sewage water and road accidents.
Accordingly, the SGP informed the court that nine deer were captured from CLRI campus in March this year and translocated to the Guindy zoo after quarantine. Though 25 more had to be captured, the work could not be carried due to COVID-19.
In the meantime, five of them died, he said. After recording his submissions, the judges adjourned the case to January next for filing a status report.
