Kerala rogue elephant radio collar fails to send signals
Villagers fear ‘Arikomban’, who was moved deep into the forest, may return
Thiruvananthapuram: The residents in and around Chinnakanal in Idukki district, who had been tormented by Kerala’s one of wildest elephants ‘Arikomban’, are again worried, as on Wednesday, the officials said that radio signals have not been received for hours now.
‘Arikomban’ was captured, radio collared and sent to deep forest on Saturday.
According to the officials, the last signal was received on Tuesday afternoon.
The eight kg radio collar that was put on the neck of the elephant soon after being captured, is tuned to send signals every hour, but the forest officials said that the last signal was received was at 2pm on Tuesday.
And the location of Arikomban at that time was around 10 kms from where it was captured.
On Saturday, after being captured it was taken and let off around 21 kms from the spot it was taken into custody after seven doses of tranquilisers.
The forest department is now contacting the company which supplied the radio collar, and according to experts at times the connection can get aborted due to the location and probably bad weather too. They are now trying to track Arikomban using a VHF antenna.
What has turned out to be a dampener is the news that wild elephants have a characteristic of returning to its favoured place and with ‘Arikomban’ last spotted around 10 kms from where it was captured, the town fears it will return.