COIMBATORE: Members of the district-level captive elephant monitoring committee, who checked the health of Perur Patteswarar temple elephant Kalyani on Monday, said the animal is doing fine and obeying the mahout’s instructions.
According to sources, as part of assessing the mental ability as well as the health of the captive elephants, senior officials in Chennai have given instructions to the concerned DFOs, as recently the Tiruchendur Murugan Temple elephant Deivanai killed her mahout and his relative last week.
A member of the committee said, “We assess the Perur temple elephant health once in four months. We could not assess the animal in August due to various forest-related works. The animal has gained more than 100 kg of weight from the previous health checkup in April. The animal is also carefully obeying the mahout’s commands, and the mahout is maintaining a good relationship.”
“We have instructed the mahout to dump some river sand to facilitate the animal to take rest instead of making the animal to stand for long hours at Nandavanam, which was specially designed for Kalyani. We have also instructed the HRCE officials to cover the place using sheets or other methods to prevent interaction with nearby ghoshala, as there is a high chance of disease spreading from cows there,” another official with the committee pointed out.