Jackal wanders into IIT Madras campus, gets beaten to death

Antony Ruben had lodged a complaint that a pack of jackals had attacked two persons in the campus.
Jackal wanders into IIT Madras campus, gets beaten to death
Jackal wanders into IIT Madras campus, gets beaten to death

In another case of wildlife death at IIT Madras, a jackal that is suspected to have wandered into the campus was beaten to death on Friday night.

Antony Ruben, honorary animal welfare officer with the AWBI had lodged a complaint that a pack of jackals had attacked two persons in the IIT campus and one of the animals was beaten to death, according to The Hindu.

“I got an anonymous call on Saturday morning that a jackal was attacking people and that it was killed. I immediately went to the wildlife warden. She told the forest ranger to look into the matter on priority. They immediately investigated the case and found that the animal had indeed been killed near residential quarters E1,” Antony said. 

Antony says the jackals came close to human habitation because of two reasons. 

"One is that the area where the wall between IIT and the Guindy national park had been destroyed during Vardah. IIT was supposed to rebuild to avoid such incidents but they failed to do so. The second is that when the institution pulled out several Seemai Karuvelam trees, a lot of tree cover was lost. Jackals live in burrows and need trees to remain in the shade,” Antony said. 

Mohan, a forest ranger said, “IIT's private security guards have promised to hand over the culprit to us on Monday. Only one person was attacked and that was because he tried to harm the jackal with a wooden stick. The animal was provoked and therefore attacked him. When humans inhabit land that originally belonged to these animals, they have to respect wildlife. We are already endangering all the animals that exist. We can't go around killing the few that remains. It obviously attacked him because it was threatened. The incident happened at 4 am in the morning.”

An official with the forest department told The Hindu that based on the complaint, they carried out an investigation and suspect that the jackal might have been allegedly beaten to death by a person near one of the residential quarters on campus. 

Early this year, the IIT - M in reply to an RTI petition by Ruben, disclosed that 220 deer and eight blackbucks died in just two years on campus.

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