How Tamil Nadu is covering up elephant poaching

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Editor's note: On 3 February, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court ordered the formation of a special investigation team to probe cases of elephant poaching in the forests of Tamil Nadu. The team, it said, would comprise officers drawn from the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Tamil Nadu Police, the Tamil Nadu forest department and the Kerala forest department.  The court’s action was in response to a report prepared by the Wildlife Crime Control Board. Filed before the court in 2019, the report’s contents got leaked to the public earlier this month. Its findings are startling. Prominent industrialists and businessmen in Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai have been identified as the key buyers of illegal ivory procured from the poached animals. They form part of a network of poachers, middlemen and customers in what is clearly a lucrative pan-India business.  To cater to the demand created by such buyers, poachers in Tamil Nadu have increasingly begun targeting the elephant population in the state’s forests even as the authorities have done little to curb such activities and bring the culprits to book. …