Chennai, June 10 (BPNS)
Tamil Nadu forest department officials have located ‘Arikomban’ the wild tusker that was captured from Cumbum and located at Upper Kothayar forest in Tirunelveli district.
According to Kanniyakumari range Divisional Forest Officer Ilayaraja, the radio collar attached with the elephant has given signals that Arikomban has reached the Kanniyakumari forest area after traversing around 15 km from Upper Kothayar dam area.
Tamil Nadu forest department is conducting strict vigil with batch of ten forest officials doing round the clock duty to monitor the elephant. It is to be noted that the elephant was named ‘Arikomban’ after it entered several ration shops and homes looking for rice in Chinnakanal area of Idukki district. The name Arikomban is derived from Ari means Rice and Komban means tusker in Malayalam.
Elephant experts are of the opinion that the forest department will have to monitor the movement of the elephant closely as the elephant that tastes rice will again try for getting such food products.
Tribal organisations and activists of Kanniyakumari are worried on the presence of Arikomban in Kanniyakumari forest range as the possibility of the elephant reaching the mainland can be a matter of time.
Arikomban was captured from Chinnakanal in the Idukki district of Kerala on April 29, 2023, after a herculean task and was relocated to Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) and the elephant reached Cumbum town. In the town on seeing the elephant, people ran for life and in the milieu, a person Palraj (57) fell down from his two-wheeler and died. This led to the Tamil Nadu forest Department constituting a special team to capture the elephant which was subsequently tranquilised, captured and relocated to Upper Kothayar area in Tirunelveli district.
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