Probe claims of animal rights NGO, CoP told

A division bench comprising Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad passed the above direction based on a submission made by the counsel appearing for Indira, the present owner of elephant Malachi that INCARE has sought for donation from the public and has gone to the extent of making a false statement that the original owner from Andaman has impleaded himself into the case to vouch that elephant Malachi was illegally possessed by Indira.

Based on this, the bench directed the Commissioner of Police to submit his report within a week and postponed the matter to March 6 for further hearing. It also directed the commissioner to verify as to whether the petitioner, INCARE, has collected any money from the public based on the account details furnished in the website.

The petitioner, S Muralidharan had submitted to the High Court that elephant Malachi belonged to Masan, an Andaman resident.

But since he wanted to gift it to Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple, the elephant was handed over to Indira on September 2007 with an instruction to hand over the elephant to the temple.

But, instead of handing over the elephant, Indira kept the elephant for begging and parading it at marriage functions among others, the plea said and sought for a direction to hand over the custody of the animal to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests.