Coimbatore CBI court convicts four in two elephant electrocution cases

The Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Coimbatore, which is the Special Court for CBI cases, on Thursday convicted four persons in two cases of electrocution of wild elephants in Erode and Coimbatore districts.Chief Judicial Magistrate K. Sivakumar awarded the punishments in the cases, which were taken over and investigated by the CBI from the Forest Department, based on Madras High Court direction.In the first case, the court sentenced Mathappa (38) and his father Kalayya (78) to three-and-a-half years of imprisonment for electrocuting a male wild elephant in Thalavadi in Jeerahalli forest range in Erode district in 2020.The father-son duo cultivated crops such as ragi and paddy in six acres. They powered the iron cable fence around the farm by illegally connecting it to an overhead low t