Students of La Martiniere for Girls with the pair of tortoises rescued from a school manhole. Picture by Aranya Sen

Two endangered tortoises were rescued from La Martiniere School for Girls on Friday. They were found in a manhole near the dhobi ghat on the school premises. One of the tortoises later died.

Two sweepers spotted the Indian Star Tortoises (Geochelone elegans) while cleaning the manhole around 11am and alerted the teachers. “We put them in a drum and gave them cabbages to eat,” said Baruna Ray Chowdhury, the nature club adviser of the school.

The tortoises are not native to West Bengal and are found in the southern and western parts of India. “They are land creatures and would not have come to the water by themselves,” said wildlife activist Joydip Suchandra Kundu.

The discovery caused a stir in the school. “We were in class. The teacher asked us to run to the grounds and see the tortoises. They were so cute,” said Roxanne, a Class XI student.

Her classmate Ann Alexander said: “We had only read about the tortoises in textbooks.” She even cuddled them. “One of them was heavier. I took it in my arms.”

R. Sarkar, the vice-principal of La Martiniere School for Girls, stated: “We can’t figure out how the tortoises came floating to the school. We asked the students to go and see them. The girls were very keen to keep the tortoises in school.”

The two tortoises were taken to Deer Rescue Park in Salt Lake. One of them died on the way. Though a post-mortem has not been conducted, exposure to toxic waste in the manhole is a likely cause for the death, said Rathin Banerjee, the divisional forest officer (wildlife headquarters).

The Indian Star Tortoise has been declared a protected species under Schedule IV of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES).

Keeping them is an offence punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment and Rs 25,000 fine.

However, these tortoises are trafficked globally. “Many keep them at home as they are believed to bring good luck,” said V.K. Yadav, the deputy chief wildlife warden of the state forests department.

“They were probably kept as pets and were washed away during the heavy showers in the past few days,” he added.

The other tortoise has been provided shelter in the park, where about 200 other Indian Star Tortoises have been kept. “We would like to return them to their natural habitat. We don’t want to keep them in captivity,” said Banerjee.

According to the forest department, 1,400 star tortoises were recovered from various parts of the city last year.