Kerala elephant death: One arrested over killing of pregnant animal that sparked outcry across India

Pregnant elephant is thought to have tried to eat a piece of fruit laden with explosives – a common wildlife trap used by Indian farmers

A man has been arrested in India in connection with the death of a pregnant elephant in Kerala amid national outpouring of anger and grief.

The elephant was found by forest officials with severe injuries to its mouth, most likely after trying to eat a piece of fruit laden with fireworks – a kind of trap commonly used by farmers to stave off smaller wildlife.

Forest officials tried to help the 15-year-old animal but it refused to leave the river where it was found. In a Facebook post about the incident that went viral, Mohan Krishnan said it appeared the elephant was trying to relieve its pain with river water. The elephant died two days later.

Vets discovered the elephant was two months pregnant. Dr David Abraham, the vet who carried out the autopsy, told the New Indian Express the animal suffered “terrible injuries” to her upper and lower jaws as a result of “cracker (firework) explosion”.

The animal had likely suffered for “weeks” before it was found, unable to eat because of its injuries. “It was very weak,” Dr Abraham said.

The furore around the death has prompted the Keralan state government to launch a major investigation, with more than 250 forest department personnel searching for clues as to how the elephant came to be injured.

Media reports have generally stated that the elephant ate a rigged pineapple – but even this is just conjecture given the time that passed between the injuries and the discovery of the animal.

The man arrested was named by police as Wilson, a farmer in the Ambalappara district, but police did not elaborate on what led them to believe he was linked to the incident. On Thursday, Kerala’s chief minister said the investigation was focused on three suspects, while police said they had brought in two people for questioning.

The elephant’s death has outraged animal rights activists, celebrities and leading businessmen alike, with Ratan Tata - one of India’s richest men - writing on Twitter that “such criminal acts against innocent animals are no different than acts of premeditated murder against other humans”.

India has around 27,000 wild elephants, according to the most recent (2017) census, with the animals both revered in Hinduism and adopted as a “national heritage animal” in 2010. Yet there are also around 2,500 elephants held in captivity across the country, despite the well-documented cruelty involved in “training” the animals to accept being handled by humans.

The animal rescue charity Wildlife SOS said it was offering a 100,000 rupee (£1,040) reward for information leading to a conviction in the case. Killing an elephant, as a Schedule 1 animal under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The charity said that farmers continued to use “crude and inhumane” methods like fruit bombs “on the pretext of crop protection… despite crop compensation schemes available from the forest department”.

Kartick Satyanarayan, the charity’s co-founder, told The Independent: “Such heinous crimes need swift action and immediate punishment to ensure that offenders are not emboldened by inaction. No animal deserves such a cruel fate.”

As well as drawing a widespread reaction in support of animal welfare, the elephant’s death also sparked a wave of anti-Muslim hate speech online after it was mistakenly reported that the animal died in Malappuram, the only Muslim-majority district in Kerala state.

Ministers in Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist administration helped spread the mistake, with environment and forest minister Prakash Javadekar tweeting that the central government “has taken a very serious note of the killing of an elephant in Malappuram”. He added that the killing was “not an Indian culture”.

Maneka Gandhi, a prominent MP and former minister from Mr Modi’s BJP, went one step further. She not only reiterated the false claim that the incident happened in Malappuram, but added incorrectly that it was “India’s most violent district”.

Kerala’s left wing chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday rejected the claims, and accused right-wing politicians of using the elephant’s death to “unleash a hate campaign” and “import bigotry” into his state.