(IN): Tamed jumbos turn killers

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Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070726/asp/frontpage/story_8107463.asp

 

Tamed jumbos turn killers

- Eight die before Mizoram police gun down rogues

 

OUR CORRESPONDENT

 

Silchar, July 25: Two domesticated elephants turned roguish without warning

and killed eight persons in Assam's Cachar district as forest officials

waited interminably for permission from the wildlife warden to shoot them.

 

The elephants, a male and a female, went berserk around 4pm yesterday and

stalked village after village along a 20-km arc on either side of the

Assam-Mizoram border until dawn today. Anybody or anything that came in the

way of the rampaging duo was either trampled or flung away with brute force.

 

By the time Mizoram police shot the two elephants at Phainam Punji village

across the border, the pachyderms had devastated as many as five villages

under Dholai block on the Assam side. All but one of the victims were from

the five villages — Bhaghela, Tolartal, Kullicherra, Singua Basti and Puinam

Punji.

 

The victims were Renubala Das, 40, Jyotirmoy Barman, 50, Kalpataru Das, 35,

his wife Shikha Rani Das, 25, Phulkumari Das, 55, Mainarani Das 25, Chinu

Das, 5 and Abdul Rashid Mazumdar, 70.

 

Mazumdar used to live just across the border and had stepped out of home to

go to his paddy field when the male tusker gored him. Several others were

injured.

 

The Cachar administration announced ex gratia of Rs 50,000 to the families

of the victims, but that was little consolation for residents who saw death

up close during the course of the night.

 

Around 2,000 people shouted slogans against police and forest staff as the

bodies were being taken in a convoy of vehicles to Lailapur police outpost,

on the inter-state border, and then to Silchar Medical College and Hospital

for post-mortem.

 

Youth Congress leader Goutam Das, a resident of the area, said lives could

have been saved had forest guards or police taken the decision to shoot the

rogues, both owned by a timber trader, Rafauddin. Mahouts employed by the

timber trader told the police that the heavy iron chains with which the

elephants were tethered snapped like a rope when the duo tried to break

free.

 

Trained elephants are used to lug timber in forests across the Northeast.

They are usually known to be docile except during *musth*, a condition

triggered by a 60-fold increase in the testosterone levels of a male

elephant in heat. Forest officials said female elephants were just as prone

to bursts of insanity.

 

Villages adjoining wildlife parks and forests across Assam have long had

trysts with herds of wild elephants, but this is the first time in several

years that two trained jumbos have killed eight persons.

 

The divisional forest officer of Karimganj district, Salman Ahmed Choudhary,

said an 18-member wild herd had been spotted roaming about in the forests

straddling Cachar and Karimganj.

 

 

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