Kerala: Captive elephant gores its mahout to death

Palakkad: A captive elephant gored to death its  first mahout  at  Melarcode near Nenmara early on Tuesday. The pachyderm ‘Ukkan Kunju’ attacked  mahout Kannan, 36, of Thrissur around 4 a.m.while the second mahout was loosening its hackles for taking it to Melarcode masjid for the ‘nercha’ procession. The elephant caught hold of the mahout with its trunk and gored him.    The animal was brought under control by 6 a.m.  through  tranquilizer shots fired by a veterinary expert.

Mr  V.K. Venkitachalam,  general secretary of Heritage Animal Task Force based in Thrissur, alleged that the elephant from Chalakudy which reached Palakkad through an elephant contractor here had earlier lost one of its trunks in an accident and had been paraded by fitting an artificial one.  He also said that the elephant was in musth  and had run  amok as it was not given proper rest, food and water during the fest. He said  it had run amok and killed its mahout during the shooting of a film  at Athirappilly in 2011.

According to Alathur SI   S. Aniesh,  a case of unnatural death has been registered on  the incident as per CrPC 174. “The elephant has a fitness certificate dated 31.03.2018  given by a veterinary doctor which is  valid for 15 days,” he said.   It  was paraded for the ‘nercha’ fest which started on Monday afternoon and ended by 10 p.m. The organisers had planned to parade the elephant early on Tuesday for a few hours when the incident happened.