Chennai: A three-year-old male tusker was found dead in the forests at Malampuzha near Palakkad district on Tuesday morning. The authorities said they suspected that the elephant got electrocuted after coming in contact with a live wire.
When forest officials, police and local residents reached at the scene of the accident, three other wild elephants were found to be guarding the one that got electrocuted and were seen pushing it to make it get up on its feet.
Meanwhile, the authorities are now trying to see that the three wild elephants are moved into the forests so that the autopsy procedures of the dead elephant could be undertaken. The arrangements to bury it are also going on, said officials.
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An RTI reply published by The New Indian Express in November 2020 suggested that 849 wild elephants died in Kerala in the last decade from 2009-10 to 2018-19.
The report also said around 80 per cent of elephants die due to natural causes while the rest die due to electrocution, injuries caused by snares planted by humans, poaching and fight among tuskers.
The figures were released by the forest department, suggesting that the death rate of wild elephants in Kerala is high.
According to a report in Times of India, an NGO alleged that 23 captive elephants died in Kerala in the last 10 months due to torture.
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(With inputs from IANS)