FEATURE - Uproar in India as captured elephant dies in despair
Date: 14-Mar-03
Country: INDIA
Author: Myra MacDonald
A few days later he is dead. Reverentially, the local people dig a deep pit for him, cover his body with a white sheet, fling in flowers and grimly start shovelling earth into the grave of an elephant who wildlife campaigners say was tortured to death.
In a country that reveres the elephant as a god, the death of Vasant Bahadur - roughly translated as "Spring Warrior" - has stirred a national uproar, as campaigners demand an end to ancient practices used to catch and tame the huge mammals. The story started in the thickly forested hills of the former principality of Jashpur, in the central state of Chhattisgarh and around 930 km (580 miles) south-east of New Delhi, when a herd of wild elephants strayed in from a neighbouring state.
Wildlife campaigners say the elephants were driven out of their natural habitat by deforestation and mining - mainly for iron ore - and went in search of food.
They raided villages in a desperate search for grain and rammed down mud-walled houses to quench their thirst with home-made alcohol.
At least 35 people were trampled or gored to death and the state called in Parbati Barua, India's only female elephant catcher who learned the trade from her father, to catch the elephants. Vasant Bahadur was the first one she caught.
"The elephants will be captured and trained by me, and then given to a government department for use in tourism, patrolling and logging," said Barua, a small woman in a red dress and rather unlikely blue flip-flops.
Drawing on a family tradition of elephant-taming going back nine generations, she tracks a herd for up to 15 days on foot, by jeep, or on the back of one of her two pet elephants.
"This is a very dangerous job, but I like it. I've been with elephants since I was a child. It is a very loveable animal," said Barua, who caught her first elephant at the age of 14.
But this time, something went wrong. And unusually for such a remote place, six hours drive from the nearest big town, it was captured on film by the Wildlife Trust of India.
ELEPHANT SPREAD-EAGLED
On day one, the film shows what looks like a young elephant, his feet bleeding, being brought into the clearing which Barua has made her temporary base.
Wildlife experts say Barua is using an ancient method known as "mela shikar", where hunters, riding two tame elephants, chase a herd into the ground, target an elephant and squeeze it from both sides until they can lasso it and drag it out of the herd.
At a film screening in New Delhi, the Wildlife Trust of India shows Vasant Bahadur wincing as his tusks are sawn off. He is then pulled down with ropes, spread-eagled, and beaten with rods.
Repeatedly he tries to get up, his eyes wide with fear.
And then it shows the funeral, followed by a clip of Barua saying simply that "this one couldn't forget his freedom".
"Some of the methods she is using are extremely archaic," said Vivek Menon, executive director for the Wildlife Trust of India. He campaigns for other methods of handling wild elephants.
The Trust says the 25,000 to 27,000 Asian elephants in India should be given special protected forest reserves.
When they stray, they should be driven back into these reserves through "safe" corridors, identified by satellite mapping. And if they must be caught, this should be done as humanely as possible, with trained vets on stand-by.
"The moment the elephant is in your hands, you should take every step to comfort the animal," said Menon. "And definitely don't truss it up like a chicken."
Speaking in Jashpur a few days before Vasant Bahadur's death, Barua shrugs off questions about how miserable the animal looked.
"That's very natural. He's lost his independence," she said, adding elephants sometimes refuse to eat after being caught.
Vasant Bahadur, the skin of his legs and trunk rubbed white from the ropes, was tied up in a small clump of trees, surrounded by lush green rice fields, dwarfed by Barua's two tame eleph