Karnataka: No tranquilizers? No problem. This veterinary gets it from South Africa

Hassan: A veterinarian has come to the rescue of beleaguered officers of the forest department, and helped them capture a rogue tusker by importing ten vials of tranquilizers from South Africa. With spiralling cases of human-animal conflict resulting in four deaths during the last 18 months in Sakleshpur-Alur region of the district, local officers of forest department faced the ire of residents as they could not capture and shift rogue elephants due to shortage in supply of tranquilizer. The veterinarian, who learnt about the shortage of such darts, picked up ten vials during his visit to South Africa to participate in a conference.

On Saturday, the first vial was used to sedate and capture a 35 year-old tusker in Rajendrapura forest area, Alur Taluk, Manjunath, deputy conservator of forests, Hassan, told Deccan Chronicle. He said after a day's break, operations would resume to capture another pachyderm which was causing lot of problems for local residents of the district. And to capture these rogue tuskers, tamed elephants Abhimanyu, Gopalaswami, Vikram, Harsha and Krishna, all trained to support such risky operations, have been roped in by the authorities. Mr Manjunath said the break was essential as tamed elephants get exhausted after each operation which includes goading the rogue tusker to board a truck.