Wild tuskers kill forester, wreak havoc in village

A herd of 15 wild elephants, including two calves, killed a forest official of Madhya Pradesh and a bull and destroyed many houses in Gobha village on UP-MP border during Sunday night, a senior forest official said. An alert has been sounded in Sonbhadra district, which shares its boundary with Madhya Pradesh.

A herd of 15 wild elephants, including two calves, killed a forest official of Madhya Pradesh and a bull and destroyed many houses in Gobha village on UP-MP border during Sunday night, a senior forest official said.

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An alert has been sounded in Sonbhadra district, which shares its boundary with Madhya Pradesh.

A senior official said when the herd strayed into Gobha village, the MP forest department official Ramdarash went to drive away the elephants. One of the elephants coiled its trunk around Ramdarash, lifted him and slammed him on the ground. The forester died on the spot. Then the herd left him and moved towards the villages in MP.

The tuskers also damaged crops in Bairahava, Sirasoti, Naniyagarh and a few others villages in MP. A bull also faced the fury of the elephants and was trampled to death. Several people fled their homes on seeing the angry elephants, the official added.

Ranger of Jaraha forest range Dinesh Kumar said that an alert was sounded in the villages in the district on UP-MP border and teams of forest officials patrolled the bordering areas throughout the night. “On Sunday morning, we got to know that the herd turned towards Chhattisgarh and went 10 km off UP border,” he said. However, the forest team kept a strict vigil on the border and later moved back to the range.

Kumar said that officials deployed in bordering areas had been instructed to keep a vigil on the border.