Meet Khaleem: The celebrity kumki elephant of Tamil Nadu

Eight-and-a-half feet tall and weighing 5.5 tonnes, Khaleem, the majestic tusker at Anamalai Tiger Reserve is Tamil Nadu’s star kumki elephant. With a broad head and a frame that is tall and imposing, Khaleem could almost pass for a poster elephant on tourism brochures – his ideal features conforming to what ancient Tamil texts describe as the requisites for a majestic elephant.
Khaleem was captured in 1972 from Sathyamangalam forests at the age of seven and trained as a kumki elephant.Wherever wild elephants stray into human habitation, damage crops and threaten humans, Khaleem is summoned to capture the wild pachyderm and take it to one of the three training camps in the state, which today are home to more than 50 elephants.
A senior wildlife officer said soon after Khaleem was captured at Sathyamangalam, they planned to start an elephant camp there. Khaleem would have been the first to undergo training in the camp. However, with the introduction of the Wildlife Protection Act that year, the idea to have a camp at Sathyamangalam was dropped and instead Khaleem was sent to the then Indira Gandhi Wildlife sanctuary and National Park in Pollachi, Coimbatore where an elephant camp was already functioning.
At Topslip, in Coimbatore, Khaleem became a ward of Palanisamy, one of the most skilled mahouts, who trained the tusker for seven to eight years. Apart from training the animal on moving forward and backward in a controlled manner, trumpeting and other commands, the mahout also trained Khaleem to attack wild elephants. Khaleem is a foot soldier who leads from the front. He is also the one who delivers the first blow to a wild elephant and brings it under control.
In one of the earliest operations, Khaleem was taken to Kavalur village near Yelagiri in Vellore district in 1986-87 to tame a wild tusker who had raided crops and created havoc among residents. Using his skills obtained from his master, Khaleem easily overpowered the wild elephant and the operation was successfully wrapped up in a single day.
A senior veterinarian said Khaleem has participated in 60 rescue operations in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh so far. He has never failed to deliver and no humans have been injured in any of the operations. Forest rangers call Khaleem an impenetrable shield that protects humans. Some kumkis may panick and get agitated, but Khaleem never lets his mahouts down, they say.
Khaleem has a darker side though. An alpha male, he doesn’t allow male elephants in his camp to flirt with his mates. Forest officials recall how the tusker, not very long back, had gored Pallava, another elephant, to death after Pallava tried wooing a female elephant in the camp. Sridhar, a camp mate, faced a similar fate. Being a makhna – a male elephant born without tusks – Sridhar was no match for Khaleem.
At one point, forest officials even considered eliminating Khaleem as he had become too violent and controlling. But they gave up, on second thoughts. Khaleem’s position as star kumki put paid to those plans.