In This Tamil Nadu Camp, Killer Elephants Are Retrained To Repel Similar Attacks
NDTV
"Ever since I've been training Moorthy, for so many years, he is like an innocent child and doesn't hurt anybody," says the elephant's trainer.
Moorthy killed 21 people and terrorised entire villages in southern India for years before he was captured and retrained to repel similar attacks by other wild elephants starved due to deforestation.
The 58-year-old grey beast, recognisable from the bright pink spots that pockmark his face, was already spared a death sentence after trampling nearly a dozen people in the southern state of Kerala.
Despite an official order to shoot him, Moorthy escaped across state lines into neighbouring Tamil Nadu, where he proceeded to kill 10 more people.
But state authorities there "forbade harming the elephant" and in 1998 he was instead taken into the Theppakadu camp for taming, said Kirumaran M., his trainer.
