Two elephants including a calf trampled three persons to death, including a three-year-old boy, in two adjacent villages in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district on Wednesday.
Both incidents occurred in the Lailunga forest range under the Dharamjaigarh forest division.
The elephants entered Gosadih village at around 2 am and trampled the three-year-old, Satyam Rawat, to death. At the time, Rawat was sleeping outside the hut and his parents had gone inside to get something.
The elephants then strode to Mohanpur village and trampled Santara Bai Rathiya (46) and Purushottam Khadia (48).
While Purushottam got stuck under the debris of his home, which was destroyed by the elephants, Santara got stuck in the mud outside the house and got trampled.
Jitendra Upadhyay, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Dharamjaigarh told The Indian Express, “One of the elephants is a female and the other is her calf. They are loners. There are a few more loners moving around and we have made special teams to monitor their movement 24/7 to ensure they do not cause further harm to villagers.”
An immediate aid of Rs 25,000 was provided to the kin of each of the deceased, he said.
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Upadhyay said that the sarpanch of the village was also alerted around 9 pm on Tuesday of the elephant’s movement in advance. The officer also said that efforts are being made to find out if the same elephant had trampled another person to death earlier this month.
Over the past ten years, northern Chhattisgarh has witnessed a surge in human-elephant conflicts, with several incidents reported, according to the Forest Department officials.
According to the officials, these clashes have claimed over 320 lives in the last five years alone. Similar incidents have emerged in recent years across central Chhattisgarh, particularly in the districts of Surguja, Raigarh, Korba, Surajpur, and Balrampur, raising concerns about escalating human-wildlife tensions.– With PTI inputs
