Captured wild jumbos moved to undisclosed location near Hosur

TIRUPATTUR: The two jumbos that were captured in Tirupattur after a night-long operation on Thursday were transported to an undisclosed location near Hosur.

Forest department sources said though hit by tranquillizer darts, the pachyderms managed to move into thick bushes before the drug took over them. The onlookers, who crowded the rescue mission site, moved away once they were informed that one of the animals had broken free of its tethering rope. The week-long exercise finally ended around 4 am on Friday after tricky moments when everything seemed lost. Despite being jeopardised by onlookers, who created a scare, the forest department with the help of kumkhis from MTR and ATR managed to load the elephants into two separate trucks before being moved away from the district in the wee hours of Friday. Officials said that the pachyderms would be released into deep region of forests.

Forest officials said that they used kumkhis to control and guide the wild jumbos to get into the trucks only after the effects of the drug subsided. The movements of the wild elephants are limited during the drug-induced sleep, helping kumkhis push them into the waiting trucking on an inclined surface. “The mission could have been accomplished much earlier if only the public had refrained from scaring off the animals,” Collector Baskara Pandian told the media. “Staying away from wild animals is the best way to reduce man-animal conflict,” he added.

The three kumkhis brought for the task from Mudumalai and Anamalai tiger reserves would take a night off before returning to their camps.