In a tragic incident, two elephants were killed by lightning strike at the Bamandanga tea estate in north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district on Tuesday night, forest department officials said.
Jayanta Mondal, additional divisional forest officer of Jalpaiguri division, said, “We have launched a search operation to find our if more elephants died in the forest areas.”
“Though the elephants seemed to have died because of lightning strike, the post mortem is being conducted following standard procedure,” said a second forest official who visited the site.
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Local villagers spotted the dead elephants on Wednesday morning and informed the forest officers.
“Some villagers found the bodies on the banks of the Diana river in Section-14 of Bamandanga tea garden,” said Prem Toppo, a local resident.
“The sight was painful. It took us some time to realise that lightning strikes during the heavy shower killed the poor elephants,” said Toppo.