The Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) on Thursday informed the Madras High Court that the Forest Department had prepared a catalogue of captive elephants in the State. The court had last month ordered video recording of the elephants, together with a complete profile of each animal, including age, sex and lineage, if possible.
The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu also wanted the department to make every effort to indicate how the elephants came to be captured or domesticated. Government counsel C. Harsha Raj said the catalogue was ready, and it would be presented to the court in a thumb drive. Recording his submission, the judges ordered that a thumb drive with a copy of the catalogue be forwarded to the public interest litigant, Rangarajan Narasimhan, who complained about the ill- treatment meted out to elephants in captivity, especially those that had been domesticated in temples. The case was adjourned to November 11.
The direction to catalogue captive elephants was issued after Elsa Foundation, an animal protection organisation, intervened in the case and gave a power point presentation to the court, stating that almost all captive elephants were those that had been procured illegally in violation of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
So far as the cataloguing of temple elephants was concerned, the court told the PCCF to assign officials, along with doctors, to inspect the elephants.
