Foresters to treat jumbo calf

TT, Jalpaiguri, Nov. 12: The forest department, some of whose guards had assaulted an elephant calf, has decided to treat the animal as it kept returning to human habitat despite several efforts yesterday to release it into the Reti forest in Binnaguri. 

The forest is 55km from Jalpaiguri town.

Yesterday, the forest range officer of the Binnaguri wildlife squad, Dilip Das Chowdhury, came under criticism from nature lovers after he and his team tied the calf with ropes and dragged it through a tea garden to send it back into the forest. 

The calf had bleeding injuries suffered on Tuesday night after it had strayed from its mother and had fallen into a dry reservoir at an army camp in Binnaguri. 

It was sent to the forest after being rescued from the reservoir on Tuesday night, but was spotted at Karbala tea garden the next morning. The ranger and his men tied the calf with ropes and dragged it into the Reti forest on Wednesday morning.

But the calf returned to the tea garden around 8pm yesterday.

Sumita Ghatak, the divisional forest officer of Jalpaiguri wildlife division, said: “We and brought the calf to the Binnaguri wildlife squad’s camp last night. From there it was taken to the Jaldapara National Park where it is being looked after. It has injuries in its trunk and near the eye and veterinarians are treating it. As far as the range officer’s attempt to send the calf back in the wild is concerned, we are inquiring into the matter,” Ghatak said.

The welfare officer of Karbala tea garden, Surajit Pal, who was an eyewitness yesterday, alleged that the manner in which the foresters treated the calf was most “unscientific and bordered on torture”. “The range officer of the squad, Dilip Das Chowdhury, treated the wild calf worse than one sees people treating their cattle at home,” the welfare officer said.

Pal said that he was surprised that the forest officer had sent the calf back into the forest without treating it. “It is a known fact that wild elephant calves that stray into human habitation is seldom accepted back by the herd. I fear for this particular calf’s survival,” Pal had said yesterday said.

Das Chowdhury has denied the allegation of torturing the calf. “The calf is barely two months old and we thought that we will attempt to send it back to its mother avoiding as less human contact as possible,” he said.