Barua

Guwahati, April 10: The only female elephant trainer in Asia, Parvati Barua, today dismissed charges of cruelty on an elephant which she had captured in Chattisgarh and later died in captivity. Animal rights activists had kicked up a storm after the incident.

In her first defence in her home state since the death of the elephant on February 24, Barua rebutted the charges brought against her point by point. She claimed that “not a single ‘expert’ who really knows about capturing and training elephants has blamed me”.

“I feel sad that the elephant captured in Chattisgarh did not survive. But there cannot be a bigger lie than the allegation made by these persons that I killed the elephant deliberately through an act of cruelty. Elephants are a way of life for me and I love elephants more than these persons who are shedding crocodile tears, trying to gain cheap publicity at my expense,” Barua said in a prepared statement.

The trainer, who comes from the princely family of Gauripur and has learnt her craft as a family tradition, was asked by the Chattisgarh government to capture rogue elephants, which had killed over 30 people. Barua caught only one called Vasant Bahadur before the controversy erupted.

She is being accused of using an age-old method of elephant capture called mela shikar by which hunters, riding two tame elephants, chase a herd into an open space, target an elephant and surround it until it can be lassoed and dragged out of the herd.

Barua, however, said she did not use this method and the elephant was caught through “chemical immobilisation” (using tranquillisers). “I did not carry out any mela shikar despite tremendous pressure from senior forest officers and even some local politicians who were probably given a wrong impression by the forest officers that I would use that particular method,” she said.

“Everything said in the media about the capturing of the elephant in Jashpur by mela shikar is an absolute lie and the persons responsible for feeding this lie should be ashamed of themselves,” Barua added.

Though she believed that “in the strict sense, capturing and domestication of any wild elephant by any method is a cruelty”, Barua said, “The law permits this cruelty. Once an elephant has been captured for the purpose of domestication, as happened in this case, training is an essential evil.”