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Jumbo show ends in tragedy

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

A jumbo show that ended in a tragedy at Thodupuzha in Idukki district on Saturday has led to animal lovers in Kerala rallying together against the torture of elephants.

The show, designed to find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, ended in chaos with untrained baby elephants running amok, killing one person and injuring several others, including the state education minister P J Joseph.

The tragedy dashed the plans of the organisers to parade 108 jumbos at an elephant show held in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, with several elephant owners pulling back after the melee.

Though 122 elephants were registered for the show, the organisers could manage to bring only 75 of them to the venue of the final point of the show, the Newman's College grounds. The show marked the climax of an agriculture fair called 'Karshikamela 2000' organised by the Kerala Congress-Joseph, a constituent of the ruling Left Democratic Front.

The organisers have accused the rival Kerala Congress factions of engineering the tragedy. Joseph alleged that some miscreants attacked the baby elephants with needles while they were on the Thodupuzha bridge. At the same time, some jeeps were driven on to the bridge from both directions, adding to the melee. The police failed to control the situation, the minister charged.

Utter confusion prevailed for hours in the town, with tension-riven drivers, well-caparisoned elephants and mahouts jamming the roads and bylanes. Seven baby elephants shrugged off all control over them and ran amok.

A baby tusker stole the show. He gave vent to his fury, fanned by the blazing sun, at nearby vehicles, and smashed an Ambassador car, a Maruti car and an autorickshaw. He was finally given a tranquilliser and brought under control.

The dead person was identified as Mannur M J Jose (39), a Kerala Congress-Joseph politician and president of the Rubber Producers' Society. His ailing father too breathed his last on hearing the news of his son's tragic end.

Animal lovers, who were instrumental in bringing to an end to the annual practice of Gajamela or the Great Elephant March staged for tourists by the tourism department, are up in arms against the government for permitting the extravaganza.

V K Venkitaraman, a member of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty Towards Animals, alleged that the Kerala Elephant Owners Association, which was affected by the discontinuation of the Gajamela from last year, were behind the present parade. He demanded a judicial inquiry into the show which, he said, was held against the directives of the Animal Welfare Board of India.

The board had banned the practice of bringing in elephants from other districts to the venue by lorries.

The elephants for the Karshikamela were brought from Thrissur, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta and Idukki against the Board's directives.

The controversy over exploitation of elephants first caught media attention when a section of foreign tourists charged the department with subjecting the animal to unabashed brutality. The protest was sparked off by a show held on the Kovalam beach on New Year's Eve, 1996. A chained and decorated elephant was made to do a marathon dance to Western beats from 7 pm to 2 am, after helping it to dizzy heights with a lavish dose of beer. Two tourists from Britain and Japan raised an alarm and rushed to the local police to help save the pachyderm.

A few days later, a similar protest was lodged in Kochi when 101 elephants were paraded in glittering finery to play host to a group of foreign tourists.

British conservation consultant and spokesman of the UK-based Born-Free Foundation, Ian Redmond, then stepped in, threatening to publicise cruelty to the animals at elephant shows. Redmond said the elephant shows in Kerala saw some of the worst animal abuses in the world.

Redmond recalled instances of animals being hauled into vehicles, baby elephants separated from their mothers and the public being allowed to pat and touch the calf. Some of them had fresh cuts on their limbs because of the chains being too tight, with puss oozing out from the wounds.

Ironically, tourists were provided drinks and shelter as the animals were made to swelter in the sun for four hours, he said.

According to sources close to the State Elephant Protection Council and the Elephant Squad Daya, 250 mahouts and 234 elephants have been killed in the state over the last 20 years, with 18 mahouts killed last year alone. Failure to accord proper care to the animals reportedly accounted for most of the fatal cases. Wrong human approach tops the long list of reasons that could drive the animal mad, according to Elephant Protection Council secretary Dr K C Panicker.

In the last 20 years the number of tame elephants in the state had risen to 600 from 250. Four hundred of them were brought from Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka because of the growing demand for their service. Bihari elephants are found to be the most difficult to handle, says Panicker, who is also an expert in firing tranquillise shots at rogue elephants.

He says elephants run amok or die mainly because of torture. Twentyfive per cent of the about 2,000 mahouts in the state know little about the nature and behavioural pattern of the animals. As a result, at least one elephant dies in the state every month, he adds.

Panicker says he could save 150 elephants since April 24, 1979, when he fired the first tranquilliser shot in the state. Since then his teams have fired the shot at over 350 elephants.

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