Tusks got from stream land Gudalur man in jail

Udhagamandalam:

Forest officials

have arrested a 28-year old man in the Gudalur division of forests and seized from him a pair of

tusks

.

According to officials, anti-poaching watchers had recently stumbled upon a skeleton of a male elephant in the Gudalur division of forests in the Nilgiris. However, the tusks were missing.

They immediately alerted the higher officials. “The tusker’s skeleton was found deep inside the forest at Pulianpara. The animal might have died at least 5-6 months ago,” P K Dileep, district forest officer (Gudalur division) told TOI.

The officials, meanwhile, launched a probe into the missing tusks. Based on a tip, the forest officials nabbed V Manikandan of Gudalur area and recovered the tusks from him.

According to Manikandan, he got the tusks from a stream near to his field. “Manikandan was in his field when he saw a pair of tusks floating in the stream some 20 days ago. He silently held on to the tusks and was searching for a buyer till we seized them from him on Saturday,” Dileep said. Manikandan was later remanded in judicial custody.

According to Dileep, preliminary postmortem report revealed that the elephant had died of natural cause.