A 15-year-old pregnant elephant died in Kerala after facing brutal animal abuse. The elephant died after eating a pineapple stuffed with crackers allegedly placed by some locals when she left the forests of Silent Valley in Palakkad district in search of food. As per reports, the fruit exploded in her mouth, broke her jaw and left her in searing pain. With a distorted jaw and some severe injuries, she was unable to eat anything for days. This horrific incident came to light when a forest official Mohan Krishnan, took to social media to narrate the story of this animal brutality. The pregnant elephant walked up to the Velliyar River and just stood there. To soothe her injuries, the elephant stood in the river with her mouth and trunk in the water. The rapid rescue team even tried to bring two captive elephants to try and get the injured elephant out of the water but it all ended in a failure.
After hours of attempts by the officials to rescue the elephant, she eventually died. Mohan Krishnan’s emotional Facebook write up added “She didn’t harm a single human being even when she ran in searing pain in the streets of the village. She didn’t crush a single home.”
The Kerala Forest Department has launched a ‘manhunt’ for those responsible for the death of a 15-year-old pregnant wild elephant, said an official. Samuel Pachuau, the Wildlife Warden of the Silent Valley National Park, near Palakkad said that this was a serious crime whosoever was behind it. We are quite certain to find the perpetrators of this crime, which is in no way acceptable at all.” Two sets of teams are probing this incident he added. According to the officer, the FIR was lodged under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act. Forest officials have heightened intelligence networking and patrolling at the Silent Valley Park as the incident has reportedly occurred between the buffer zone and the plantation areas.
An elephant expert David Abraham came and examined and explained that it looked like a two-week wound and there were worms in the wound. “We informed the Forest officials that the prognosis was bad and two days later the elephant died in a sitting posture in the water. The next day, when we conducted the post-mortem we found a nearly two-month-old foetus. From the uterus, we could make out it was the first pregnancy of the elephant. Only when we conducted the autopsy, we could see that the upper and lower jaw, teeth and tongue of the elephant was badly damaged,” informed David.
Soon after the autopsy was conducted, the dead elephant was buried in the forest. People have started an online petition demanding justice for the pregnant elephant. Demanding an end to such cowardly acts, B-town stars, cricketers and politicians called for love and respect towards the creatures on different social media platforms.
