Three members of a family including a one-and-half year-old child were trampled to death by a wild elephant herd in the Udalguri district in Assam.
The elephants which came to the village from the nearby Arunachal Pradesh hills completely ravaged the house in Nijora area and attacked the residents who were asleep.
The dead are identified as Nabin Basumatary (53), Jamini Basumatary (33) and Hadansha Basumatary (1.6) years. Elephants frequent this area in search of food and this time it was the orange garden along the foothill of Arunachal hills.
However, seven-year-old Nijora Basumatary escaped miraculously and was unhurt. She now has no living family member.
In another similar incident on the wee hours of the Tuesday, three people including a child were killed in an elephant attack in Goalpara district. The incident took place at Kurang village near Lakhipur along the Assam-Meghalaya border where a pachyderm herd descended from the nearby Meghalaya hills in search food
“Three people including a child were killed in an elephant attack,” said Dhruba Dutta, Forest Range Officer of Lakhipur.
Man elephant conflict has taken a serious turn in the state. In July a wild tusker attacked one youth at the Amching Jorabat area near Guwahati while in May, three of a family were trampled to death by wild elephants in the Goalpara district.
In the state rued by man-elephant conflict, 229 humans lost their lives in the past three years.
Assam lost 75 human lives in 2019-20, as many as 91 in 2020-21, and 63 in 2021-22. The shrinking elephant habitats lead the pachyderms to make a foray into human habitats, leading to such conflicts and rampant deforestation in the state also aggravates the situation.
According to Forest Department sources, 33 elephant casualties due to electrocution took place in the state in three years – nine in 2018-19, 11 in 2019-20, and 13 in 2020-21.
The sources further added that 15 elephants died in three years – four in 2019, six in 2020 and five in 2021 – after being hit by trains in NF Railway’s jurisdiction.
