Court fines driver Rs. 200,000 for harassing baby elephant in Habarana

The driver of a jeep that harassed a baby elephant on the Trincomalee-Habarana road was fined Rs. 200,000 by Kekirawa Magistrate’s Court yesterday. The punishment was after he was arrested by wildlife officials and produced before the court.

A TikTok video, posted by the user @shashikagimhandha, shows the moment when the driver chanced upon a wild elephant on Trincomalee-Habarana road at night. 

The Sigiriya Road from Trincomalee to Habarana was gazetted in 1938 as a prohibition on wildlife crimes under the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance.

The suspect, a resident of Kekirawa, was arrested during an operation conducted by wildlife officials including the Minneriya National Park Reserve Officer W.M.L.K. Wasala.

Instead of waiting for the animal to pass, the driver charged towards it in a teasing manner and shining the vehicle’s strong headlight at it.

Visibly scared, the animal begins to back off but the person kept driving towards it even as the hapless creature kept trumpeting in distress and tried to seek refuge behind a tree. The video of TikToker harassing the wild elephant went viral sparking outrage locally and internationally.

It did not take long for the video to trigger an outcry online after Poorna Seneviratne (@PoornaSenev) shared it on Twitter. 

“If you don’t have an ounce of brains to not realise that this is absolutely disgusting and wrong, you need to be absolutely destroyed,” Seneviratne tweeted. “DO NOT endanger and disturb wildlife for stupid social media views,” he added online, tagging important personalities such as Mahela Jayawardane, Kumar Sangakkara, Dr. Asha de Vos, Russel Arnold, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and official handles of authorities like Wildlife and Nature Protection Society and Pearl Protectors.

Soon, netizens too condemned the video and sought action against the person in question. Collectively, people dug out the perpetrator’s Facebook profile and also revealed the jeep’s number, while tagging the Police Department.