Tamed Elephants on Patrolling Duty!

OUR CORRESPONDENT

TINSUKIA: The Tinsukia police have envisioned tamed elephants for patrolling duties in inaccessible border areas.

Conceptualized by Tinsukia SP Debojit Deuri, the district police intend to raise 'elephant cops'. Elephant owners and mahouts will be part of the plan.

A preliminary discussion took place at Kachijan reserve forest under Doomdooma Forest Division on Friday. More than 20 elephant owners and mahouts, forest officials and police officials, including SP Deuri, were present at the meeting.

SP Deuri told the gathering that he was planning to induct the tamed elephants into the police force for patrolling sensitive border stretches that have no means of communication other than foot marching. The proposal pleased the elephant owners who face many difficulties in time feeding their elephants.

Later in the day, 20 captive elephants with police and forest personnel undertook a symbolic forest patrolling from Phillobari to Bordumsa along the Assam-Arunachal border.

Talking to The Sentinel, Deuri said that elephant owners, mostly belonging to the Moran community, use captive elephants for other purposes. However, they face difficulties to maintain the pachyderms without any income from them, he said.

IOC (AOD) has oil installations close to the elephant corridor, is bearing the brunt of wild elephants. Deuri expects that IOC should support this endeavour in its management plan to mitigate the man-elephant conflict.

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