Mumbai: A coalition of prominent animal protection organisations across India is urgently appealing to the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee (HPC) to ensure that Omkar, a 10-year-old solitary male elephant from the Western Ghats, remains in the wild and is not subjected to permanent captivity.
The appeal follows a November 12 ruling by the Bombay High Court’s Kolhapur Bench, which allowed Omkar's temporary capture but placed all final decisions on his long-term fate squarely in the hands of the HPC, chaired by Justice Deepak Verma.
The animal rights groups includes signatories from People for Animals Goa, Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC), Centre for Research on Animal Rights, Heritage Animal Task Force, Blue Cross of India, Welfare of Stray Dogs, Let’s Live Together Charitable Trust, Thane CPCA and the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations.
These groups have strongly argued that sending Omkar to a captive facility, even temporarily, would lead to irreversible cruelty. They note that captured wild elephants are typically subjected to a four-to-six-month period of coercive, pain-based training in a confined enclosure to break their spirit and autonomy, making their return to the wild significantly harder.
"The transformation is irreversible: the animal’s spirit is broken to an extent where safe return to the wild or the possibility of rejoining a herd become much harder," the organisations' statement asserted. The groups are calling for a coordinated, expert-led attempt to either reunite Omkar with his original herd or translocate him into a similar forested habitat within the Western Ghats, ensuring he continues to live as a free-ranging wild elephant.
The organisations highlighted that Omkar is classified as a Schedule 1 protected wild animal under the Wild Life Protection Act, 2022, which mandates strict protection and only allows conversion to captivity if rehabilitation in the wild is scientifically proven to be impossible, a determination the groups say has not been made.
The groups contend that the barriers to Omkar's rewilding are administrative and logistical, not ecological or behavioral. The Kolhapur forest division has faced difficulties securing expert cooperation and technical guidance from institutions in other states, highlighting a crucial coordination gap that the HPC was created to address.
The coalition alleged that no single state forest division possesses the institutional mandate or national reach required to coordinate inter-state expertise, calling on the HPC to bring in expertise from states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which have successful track records in managing and translocating solitary and conflict elephants. They cited Tamil Nadu's Rivaldo case as an example of success through patient monitoring and in-situ rehabilitation and Kerala’s Arikomban case as proof that science-led translocation, executed in coordination with other states, can reconcile human safety with animal welfare.
The animal welfare organisations highlighted that the High Court's record acknowledged that Maharashtra currently lacks a fully equipped elephant rehabilitation facility, and the proposed state elephant camp will take years to develop. "The HPC’s decision will set a national precedent. We urge the committee to uphold the principle that wild elephants belong in the wild, not behind enclosures, and to ensure that administrative expediency does not override ecological and ethical responsibility,” it said.
Suparna Ganguly, founder of the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC), said, "At this crucial juncture, the committee can ensure that Omkar’s future is shaped by ecological integrity, constitutional obligation, and compassionate expertise rather than by the unintended consequences of captivity.”
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