Bhubaneswar: 66-year-old tusker Mahendra, who along with Rajkumar was relocated from Satkosia Tiger Reserve to Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR) to aid in the monitoring of big cats in June last year, passed away in the Chahala area of Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district on Sunday night.
The pachyderm had been keeping unwell due to age-related ailments and breathed his last on at around 9.45 pm, sources said.
‘Mahendra’ was brought to Similipal in December 2001 from Rajiv Gandhi National Park in Karnataka, along with two female elephants, Bhavani and Shobha. The trained bull elephant was deployed at vulnerable points of tSTR to combat poaching and timber smuggling and received bullets in a Maoist attack in 2012, which left him grievously injured. The eight-foot-tall Mahendra received five gunshots and a few arrow injuries at the elephant camp at Gudgudia. He, however, made a remarkable recovery and resumed his duties.
In January 2019, Mahendra was deployed to guard tigress ‘Sundari’ relocated from Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve to Satkosia wildlife sanctuary in Angul district as part of a pilot inter-State transfer project to increase the big cat population in Odisha. He was shifted back to Simipal due to the absence of tigers in Satkosia and the need for tiger monitoring in the former.
