After the death of poacher and forest brigand Veerappan in 2004, people believed that the elephant population would thrive, as no one would henceforth target them for their tusks. Contrary to belief, another group of poachers became active in various forest divisions of the State, tracking the movement of the tuskers, felling them, and selling their tusks to middlemen. A Wildlife Crime Control Bureau document has now exposed how the T.N. Forest Department has done little to address poaching and, in fact, accused it of looking the other way.
At a function in Coimbatore last month, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said that the State was at the forefront of wildlife conservation and protection. At least as far as elephants go, nothing could have been further from the truth.
Just a week before the Chief Minister’s visit, Coimbatore forest officials arrested Babu Jose, one of the main accused in elephant poaching in Tamil Nadu over the last decade. He now holds the key to the full story behind elephant poaching in T.N. forests, which has come out only in bits and pieces till now.
While the forest officials managed to apprehend Babu Jose, they still haven’t named the other key accused, Aji Bright, also from Kerala, as an accused in any of the elephant poaching cases in Tamil Nadu. They are the two who initiated poaching activities in Tamil Nadu by luring poachers, mainly from Theni district, for money, the latest report by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), a unit of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, charges.
The WCCB has now written to the State’s Forest Department, expressing concern that Babu Jose’s name was included in only three cases, and Aji Bright’s name was never mentioned, despite knowledge to the contrary.
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Glaring slip-ups
According to the letter, accessed by The Hindu , WCCB said that it was surprised to find that most of the poachers had got anticipatory bail even though they were involved in many of the elephant poaching cases. Also, a chargesheet was not filed in most of the cases because some of them were absconding, as per records of forest range offices.
The officials of WCCB, Southern Region, went through the case sheets after they were asked by Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice N. Sathish Kumar of the Madras High Court to investigate the matter related to the death of seven elephants in Megamalai Wildlife Sanctuary and 12 elephants in Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve.
It was while perusing the cases, the WCCB said, that it found that the poachers had not only removed tusks from the elephants that had been electrocuted, but had also poached many elephants from the various forest divisions of Tamil Nadu — namely the Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Kodaikanal divisions, and Megamalai Wildlife Sanctuary. It stumbled upon this information while going through the case booked at Vallakadavu Range in Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) in September 2015.
In fact, when the Kerala Forest Department arrested nine persons, including Theni poachers and Babu Jose and recorded their statements, the then Coimbatore Conservator of Forests sent out a team of officials to PTR to investigate. The poachers told the officials that they were willing to even show them the places where the corpses of the tuskers were buried. The officials returned and informed the Conservator but no action was taken.
When The Hindu contacted PTR officials at that point, they expressed surprise over the fact that the T.N. Forest Department was not taking them into custody when the poachers — identified as Singam, Kubendiran, Nagu and Anbazhagan — had submitted confessions to the effect that they had poached as many as 16 tuskers in Tamil Nadu’s forests.
After The Hindu published a story in November 2015 , the T.N. Forest Department swung into action and three cases were filed at Kotagiri, Sirumugai and Sigur ranges within a fortnight.
The WCCB document reveals what the poachers said about how they went about hunting the elephant in one of the three cases filed on December 5. The case was booked in Sigur Range, citing Kubendiran as the prime accused, and also listing Singam and Babu Jose as co-accused.
Kubendiran reportedly told them that they used to hunt during August-September and November-December. In December 2014, they killed a tusker in Sigur. In the case, Singam and Kubendiran collected the money for 30kg of tusk from Babu Jose and left the area by bus to Theni. Later, they went to Kallar and killed three elephants and cut the tusks into one-foot pieces. Similarly, they poached another elephant at Sirumugai and took the tusk and cut down into pieces and sold it to Babu Jose.
While Singam and Kubendiran were at Sigur forest, the forest officials arrested them. Babu Jose surrendered at Sigur range in January 2016. In his statement, he stated that he had handed over all the tusks to Aji Bright of Kerala.
These are among the many cases the WCCB has studied. In the letter, WCCB officials have expressed surprise over the fact that only one case was registered against the poachers and broker, at Sigur range of Coimbatore Forest Division, for the murder of three elephants during three different times in the same range.
Also, the WCCB points out that the cases were registered in a ‘very casual and careless’ manner. The cases were framed weakly, with limited sections of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
Though the gravity of the offences was heinous, the name of the main accused, Aji Bright, who bought the entire ivory stash — about 300 kg — from Babu Jose was not included in any of the poaching cases.
Also, in the 2015 Sigur case, Babu Jose had stated that he had collected a total of 16 pairs of tusks, which means eight elephants were killed.
Therefore, it stands to reason that at least eight cases must have been registered for eight elephants, but that is not the number the T.N. Forest Department records show.
Probe sought
After Babu Jose was arrested in Mettupalayam on September 22, 2019, the WCCB’s Southern Regional Deputy Director wrote to the District Forest Officer of the Coimbatore Forest Division, urging him to eliminate lacunae and sought a proper investigation, documentation and prosecution of the accused in elephant poaching cases. The DFO was asked to grill Babu Jose with 33 questions to unravel the actual number of elephants poached, the locations, the full network, including the final customers.
A copy of the letter was sent to Head of the Forest Department, Chief Wildlife Warden and APCCF (Vigilance), Tamil Nadu.
In the letter, a WCCB officer pointed out that elephant poaching took place in Coimbatore division in 2010 and 2011 as per the statements of Singam, Kubendiran and Babu Jose but the case was registered in 2015. There is a statute of limitations under Section 468 of CrPC for taking cognisance/ charging of offences. To jail them from one to three years, the limitation is three years. “It is quite unfortunate to learn that even after a period of nine years from the date of poaching, the case has not been charged properly,” it states.
The Coimbatore DFO has also been asked to revisit all the elephant poaching cases and include all connected accused persons in all the cases, especially Aji Bright, as accused number one and Babu Jose as accused number two.
Also, the Forest Department has been asked to file cases under the Arms Act with the help of police as the poachers had used guns. The bureau has asked for seizing mobile phones of the accused and sending them to the National Cyber Forensics Lab, New Delhi for recovery of details that could prove crucial for the analysis and investigation of elephant poaching cases.
As the offence was heinous in nature, involving sophisticated weapons and large tranches of cash, it should be viewed seriously, the WCCB has said, asking the T.N. Forest Department to bring it to the notice of the Income Tax Department and Enforcement Directorate at the earliest.
Anatomy Of A Killing: Here's How Poachers Went About Their Cruel Operation Inside The Forests
1. Poachers hide the guns in trees in forests and retrieve them while hunting
2. While one person or group chases the tusker, the other shoots it down
3. After hunting it down, the poachers cut the tusks into pieces inside the forest itself
4. They usually hand them over to the middleman who waits in a car
5. Later, the tusks are fashioned into ivory products and sold for large sums of money
