A bull elephant notorious for breaking into homes and ration shops to steal rice which earned him the moniker of ‘Arikomban’, was on Sunday morning released into the deep interiors of Periyar Tiger Reserve, forest officials said. The tusker has been radio-collared, and signals from it are being received, a forest official told reporters here.
“We are getting signals from the radio collar. His location will be monitored from the tiger reserve. He is very healthy,” another official said.
The tusker was tranquilised on Saturday evening and transported by truck to the tiger reserve. The operation to dart the elephant began early Saturday morning, and after more than 12 hours it was tranquilised. Giving details about the operation, which involved a large number of forest personnel and four kumki (trained) elephants, a forest official told reporters here that on the first day of the operation they were “not lucky”.
Luck favoured them on the second day after another tusker, who was a competitor of Arikomban, brought the rice-favouring elephant before the forest officials enabling them to tranquilise it, the official said.
The officials also said that the journey to the tiger reserve from Chinnakanal and Santhanpara areas of this hill district, where Arikomban had caused damage to human settlements, took some time due to the forest roads becoming slushy following rains.