Joymala case sheds light on elephant smuggling from Northeast

The ongoing dispute between the governments of Tamil Nadu and Assam over the alleged mistreatment of a temple elephant named Joymala has brought to mind the prevailing shortcomings on private ownership of elephants in India. Joymala, which was leased out by Assam to Tamil Nadu, is in the news after animal rights organizations alleged that the elephant was being mistreated. Legal battles are going on in the High Courts of Madras and Guwahati, both states making opposite claims.

While Tamil Nadu is one of the states with strict controls governing the private ownership of elephants, the lack of law enforcement in some other states has led to a thriving “black market” in which elephants are illegally caught and various Places are smuggled in, alleges. activist and conservationist.

A response in 2020 from the Project Elephant Division of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act revealed that at least one in every four captive elephants is owned by was. was not supported by relevant document by private persons. MoEFCC has clarified that keeping elephants in captivity without ownership certificate is illegal.

Read also | Guwahati HC tells Tamil Nadu government, Assam team inspects ‘misbehaved’ elephant.

While Tamil Nadu reportedly has only one elephant without a certificate of ownership, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam, Tripura and Madhya Pradesh have 96 percent of elephants in captivity without a certificate of ownership. Antony Rubin, an animal welfare activist, said, “As per the response to the RTI Act, 694 of the 723 elephants in India that are privately owned and without documentation are in these states.”

Activists allege that many elephants have been caught without documents in Assam, Tripura and other northeastern states. They are sold in elephant markets, from where people illegally take them to other states. Arunachal Pradesh, which has 109 elephants in captivity, has not released any data on whether these elephants have ownership certificates. The data also shows that Assam is home to the largest number of elephants without any ownership certificates, with 335 of the 905 captive elephants having no documents to prove ownership.

Mr Rubin said it is illegal to buy or sell elephants in India. The rules only allow elephants to be exchanged or donated between temples or private individuals. However, without an ownership certificate, keeping any elephant in captivity by a private individual is illegal as per the new amendments to the Wildlife Prevention Act.

Prominent animal rights activist and former Union minister Maneka Gandhi said, “It is a smuggling ring.” Hindu, Ms Gandhi said elephants were caught illegally in the northeastern states and smuggled to different parts of the country. “They are either sent to temples or used for begging, and when state forest departments try to take action against smugglers, they cross state borders and evade action,” he said. He suggested that rescue shelters for illegally owned elephants should be set up in every state.

A lawyer and activist, ‘Hathi’ G. Rajendran said that in many cases, one ownership certificate is used for different animals at various times when they are taken within the country. “All elephants look alike to any normal person. Therefore an ownership certificate is used for individual animals, and unless each individual animal in captivity is properly monitored and identified, it becomes extremely difficult to ascertain whether an animal has been illegally bred. was caught and is being smuggled in,” Mr Rajendran said.

Shekhar Kumar Neeraj, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Biodiversity Conservation) and former head of TRAFFIC India, said that as the head of an organization working to stop illegal trade in wildlife, some progress was made in closing the “elephant”. Is. market” such as in Sonepur, Odisha. “However, the closure of such markets could have led to the business going underground,” Dr Neeraj said.

“There is a need to investigate these reports of elephant smuggling, which have always been around,” the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, in collaboration with state forest departments, said. He had also investigated reports of elephant smuggling from India, across the border into neighboring countries. He said that DNA profiling of captive elephants should be done so that they can be identified and traced.

Tamil Nadu Additional Chief Secretary (Environment, Climate Change and Forests), Supriya Sahu said the state government is again counting the number of elephants in private custody, and checking if they all have ownership certificates. . An online portal is to be set up by the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, in which the details of elephants will be uploaded to ensure transparency.