They had stumbled on SudheendraBabu, the 60-year-old elusive suspect, recently when pursuing a case relating to the killing of at least 14 wild elephants for their ivory in Malayattoor forest division last year.

The investigators tracked him as far as Kolkata, but there his trial went cold. He had given a fake address to the middlemen from whom he frequently procured tusks.

Master key to many questions

The investigators said they believed that Babu was the master key to unlocking several unanswered questions regarding the money trial and foreign connections in the case.

His arrest could also help them tear the veil of secrecy surrounding the rich collectors who triggered the demand for ivory, which resulted in the elephant killings.

Babu, a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, had managed to slip under the Forest Department’s radar for long. He owned a high-rise apartment and two houses in the capital and led the double life of a Kolkata-based businessman. The enforcers also want his son in connection with an ivory seizure in Kozhikode.

Forest Minister ThiruvanchoorRadhakrishnan, who authorised the investigation and was privy to its details, told The Hindu that the investigation should be urgently expanded beyond the State’s and country’s borders.

The CBI has been loath to take over the case despite several appeals from him. The investigation had reached a stasis and investigators might be compelled to end the case with the evidence they have on record. The killing of wild elephants for their tusks was a watershed in wildlife crime in Kerala. It had brought into sharp focus the resurgent threat to wild elephants posed by the rising illegal trade in ivory in Asia after a hiatus of at least 10 years.

Elephant poaching on this scale had been reported only in Africa and has been rarely reported in India. The crimes also exposed ‘worrisome tendency’ among forest protectors to report wildlife killings as natural deaths to duck potential departmental action against them.