After a year-long struggle, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department on Monday, 17 April, caught the rogue tusker Karuppan in the Thalavadi forest.
The lone tusker had been posing a threat to villagers of the Thalavadi, Hasanur, and Jeerahalli areas of the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve in Erode district for the past year.
Karuppan: The clever & rouge tusker
Karuppan was a habitual crop raider and had never spared any vegetation or farming in the area. According to the Forest Department, the rogue elephant has killed two people so far.
As the tusker frequently ventures out of the forest area after 7.30 pm and returns to the forest in the early morning, people don’t leave their house in fear.
K Rasukannu, a farmer from Thalavadi, speaking to South First, said that even if they put guards on their farms, the elephant wouldn’t bother.
“All forms of tactics, including bursting crackers and drumming sounds didn’t stop the elephant. Once it entered, it got out only after eating all the crops in the fields.”
Following the menace of the lone elephant, the villagers in Thalavadi and Jeerahalli conducted several protests and road rokos, requesting for the control of the elephant entering their farmlands in May, June, and July of 2022.
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The first kill
On 5 July, 2022, Mallanayakar, a 72-year-old farmer, was trampled to death by the tusker at Dharmapuram village, while he was guarding his banana field.
Following that, a 10-member elephant tracking team was formed to trace the single tusker and drive it back to the deep forests, but the effort ended in vain as Karuppan evaded the search operation.
Further two kumkis, or trained elephants — Chinnathambi and Rajavardhan from Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) — were brought to Thalavadi and a 20-member team comprising Anti-Depredation Squads (ADS), an elephant tracking team, and a veterinarian along with the kumkis conducted a search operation for nearly 15 days.
But Karuppan evaded Chinnathambi and moved to Jeerahalli forests to continue his raids there.
Following that, in August 2022, an elephant proof trench (EPT) was created in the Jeerahalli range forest boundary, preventing Karuppan from entering the villages. A four-kilometre fence was also erected. But Karuppan found a new route to raid the villages at night.
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Rani, a Scheduled Caste farmer, told South First that the elephant was unstoppable and had nearly destroyed her field twice.
Hailing from a poor family, Rani, who has less than an acre, was farming bananas. She said, “I suffered a huge financial loss and I do farming only by getting loans. Every day we were scared for our lives because of Karuppan.”
In the meanwhile, Karuppan killed another villager, Madeva, in the Thalavadi forest range.
Following his death, the farmers petitioned the Erode district collector and the higher officials of the Forest Department to come up with a permanent solution to the elephant menace.
How Karuppan evaded ‘Operation Black’
After a consultation, the Forest Department launched its second operation to trap Karuppan in January 2023 and named it “Operation Black”.
Kapil Dev, a kumki elephant from Topslip, was brought into the operation and stationed near Korakadu near Thalavadi to keep a check on Karuppan.
A forest ranger attached to the Topslip division said that Kapil Dev is a highly-trained kumki and has the ability to control two wild elephants single-handedly.
But Karuppan seemed smarter. He remained wary of coming out to the area where the kumki was present.
“Karuppan knew that there was a new kumki in the area and had a face-to-face with Kapil Dev. Avoiding an encounter, Karuppan withdrew from the area and shifted his raid to another place,” the ranger said.
During this time, Karuppan was spotted by the operation squad. The lone elephant was shot with tranquilizer darts by the veterinarians. But the tusker managed to escape as the sedation was too low for him owing to the cold weather.
Even after a search operation for more than 24 hours, Karuppan could not be traced.
After a month, in the mid of February, Karuppan reappeared in the villages near Thalavadi.
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A Masumuni, a farmer from Thalavadi, while speaking to South First, said: “Karuppan is very clear. There are few farms with approved electric fences. This elephant would break a long banana tree, smash it into a rectangular shape, and would put it on the fence. Then it would walk on the smashed tree over the fence and into the farm. Sometimes, it would pull the fencing stone alone and destroy the electric fence.”
Meanwhile, on 18 March, the Forest Department resumed “Operation Black” by bringing in kumkis Bomman and Sujay from Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. This time too the rogue elephant escaped.
An end to Karuppan’s play
On 15 April, the Thalavadi and Jeerahalli forest officials launched a massive hunt to capture the rogue tusker.
This time, a 100-member team, including forest officials, an anti-poaching team, and veterinarians were included in “Operation Black”.
Speaking to South First, Thalavadi Forest Ranger S Sathish, who headed the operation under the monitoring of the STR Field Director, said that other wild elephants would tremble and leave farms for the smallest sound,
“But Karuppan is very stubborn. If you make a noise to draw him out, he will charge. Till now, he had destroyed farms and vegetation worth ₹50 lakh. We were very particular to catch him and for that, we brought two kumkis Chinnathambi and Mariappan from Topslip.”
“In the wee hours of Monday, we spotted Karuppan in a sugarcane field owned by one Moorthy at Maharajapuram near Thalavadi. We immediately rushed to the spot with our team prepared, leaving no way for the tusker to escape. Our veterinarians shot tranquiliser darts on the Karuppan,” Sathish said.
Further, the tusker was radio-collared and taken into a lorry with the help of kumkis to an undisclosed location.
“Since there is no permission to turn Karuppan into a kumki, we have taken him to a nearby deep forest where he was released. The people in Thalavadi and Jeerahalli are happy,” Sathish said.
