Thiruvananthapuram, June 04: Kerala Chief Minister, Shri Pinarayi Vijayan today said that the elephant torture incident is being used to tarnish the image of the State. “It’s a baseless concerted campaign against Kerala at a national level and these won’t undo the big achievements of the State in Covid mitigation and treatment.” The CM had earlier announced an investigation into the elephant torture incident at Mannarkad Forest Division in Palakkad district.

Briefing the media, the Chief Minister said, “The police and forest department will jointly investigate the incident. An investigation is underway, focusing on three suspects. The district police chief and the district forest officer visited the site today. But it is really unfortunate that certain people are using this incident to tarnish the image of the State and Malappuram in particular. In spite of having clarified that the incident took place in Palakkad and not in Malappuram as being propagated, people including central ministers are still not willing to correct the mistake. It now looks like they are doing it deliberately. This is not acceptable and any efforts to spread hatred using this incident will not be tolerated.”

The CM also added that human beings and animals should co-exist together and efforts will be taken to resolve man-animal conflicts to avoid such incidents in the future.