Tamil nadu: three booked for teasing & attacking wild elephants in udumalaipet

In a key development, three tribal youngsters, who were accused of teasing and attacking elephants in Tamil Nadu's Udumalaipet, have been booked by the Tiruppur forest officials. The

development comes after a video of three indulging in the gruesome activity with the animal went viral, and attracted a lot of criticism on social media.  As per reports, the youngsters had

taken their cattle for grazing inside the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, and there they came across two elephants and a calf. They began teasing the animal, and later went on to attack them, on

which the animals counter-attacked, but they managed to escape. The entire episode was recorded on the mobile phones of the youth involved in the act, and later in the day went viral. 

Taking cognizance of the videos, the Tirupur district forest officials registered a case against three tribal youths. They have been booked under the Wild Life Protection Act for teasing a

wild elephant. The three youths will be remanded soon.  The incident comes to light months after the Madurai High Court ordered a probe into a series of poaching incidents registered in the

State, most of which took place in a decade prior to 2015 and involved influential people. Considering the report submitted by the Wildlife Crime Control, which carried out an extensive

study in this regard, including the examination of accused, which reported that customers included influential people and contact numbers and bank transactions, the bench accepted that the

greed of man can be seen in the matter. The bench held, "Poaching was done not for livelihood, but for international trade and sadistic pleasure in creating art in fellow living

beings." (Credit- PTI/Represntative Image)