Kidnap of the ‘jumbo’ kind thwarted

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Bengaluru: If anyone thought that kidnaps and abductions are limited to humans alone, they are sorely mistaken. A few forest department staffers allegedly made an attempt to ‘kidnap’ a female elephant belonging to a temple in Tumakuru and sell it to a circus company for a ‘jumbo amount’.

The Karibasava Math at Horapete in Tumakuru has reared an elephant which knows how to move around with devotees and the forest staffers struck on an evil idea-they reportedly hatched a plot to kidnap and sell it to a circus company which would easily fetch them no less than Rs 30 lakh.

Accordingly, they told the math authorities they wanted to shift the pachyderm to Bannerghatta Biological Park for treatment. The math allowed the officers to shift the jumbo but.when the truck reached Dobespet, the thieves pushed the mahouts out from the truck and instead of taking the jumbo to Bannerghatta, moved it to a remote village in Kunigal where they hid the pachyderm. The jumbo, Lakshmi was later brought back from Kunigal by the math authorities.