The Madras High Court on Wednesday expressed displeasure over the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) not having made much progress in the court-ordered investigation into elephant poaching cases. It wanted to know why the investigating agency had not even recovered the ivory tusks.
Justices V. Bharathidasan and N. Sathish Kumar directed the Superintendent of Police concerned to appear before them through video conferencing on January 21. They also called for a status report and warned that the court would be constrained to constitute a special investigation team if the report was not satisfactory.
“We want action. We are going to record that we are not satisfied with your investigation. If you are unable to do it, we will form an SIT. What is the difficulty in seizing those materials? Is this the way the CBI investigates cases?” Justice Bharathidasan asked before summoning the Superintendent of Police.
It was a Division Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh (now a Supreme Court judge) and Justice Kumar who had ordered a CBI probe into the issue on February 10, 2021. The judges had passed the order after being dissatisfied with the action taken by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau to investigate into the offence.
Railway tracks
Apart from dealing with the issue of poaching, the court also granted time till January 21 for the railway officials to file a report listing out steps they propose to take to prevent elephant deaths in the light of Comptroller and Auditor General’s latest report that railway deaths constitute the second largest reason for unnatural death of elephants.
Since railway counsel P.T. Ramkumar informed the court that the officials had planned a meeting this week on the issue and required some time to file a detailed report before the court, the judges asked him to ensure that the report was filed by next week.
