Odisha elephant burial points to systemic rot

The cruel disposal of an elephant carcass in Kandhamal and the initial silence surrounding it exposes huge gaps in Odisha’s forest administration. The fact that it's not an isolated incident shows that not much can be redressed without penalising top officials

The Odisha government's census recorded a total number of 2098 elephants in 38 forest divisions across the state in 2024 (Photo | IANS)

History does repeat itself, and often not in a good way. The death of an elephant in Odisha’s Kandhamal district offers a recent example. Apparently poached, the jumbo’s carcass was chopped into 32 pieces, transported and buried in different places. All this was carried out by a deputy range officer. The case, which happened through January, came to light after the media picked up the trail and the forest department was forced to investigate. Its magnitude can be gauged from the astonishingly brazen act of suppression by the department officials.

The elephant died in Baliguda forest at the beginning of January. Over the next two weeks, the carcass was buried in the forest of a neighbouring division. With pressure mounting, the government suspended the deputy ranger who had given the chopping order, and arranged transportation to a separate place for burial without raising any suspicion. Incidentally, the same division had reported another elephant death about a month earlier. The government’s face-saving reaction was to suspend the ranger and an assistant conservator of forest for the mess.

This is not happening for the first time. Odisha has a history of suppressing elephant deaths. In 2021, officials of Athagarh forest division found tusks of a dead elephant stowed in a range office for over a year without being reported and accounted for. The next year, about half a dozen carcasses were found buried in different parts of the same forest, which led to the formation of a joint task force. The same year, the carcass of another elephant was torched and attempts were made to dump the remnants in a river in Similipal Tiger Reserve. Back in 2010, a spate of elephant deaths had been suppressed in the tiger habitat.

The latest case lends credence to the persistent claims of serious gaps in the forest department’s surveillance and administration. That’s primarily because in all these cases, lowerranked officials have faced the music while senior officers have escaped scrutiny. The Kandhamal incident is a glaring example of the systemic rot and heads should have rolled. But the government seems happy with a knee-jerk reaction. Odisha is a prime elephant habitat of eastern India, but is often in the news for high mortalities. Righting the wrong is necessary and hiding would not help. Accountability must start at the top