Second jumbo attack in a week forest department office ransacked
Grieving relatives of Chinnapayyan keep his body on the road and stage a road roko.( Photo: DC)
Krishnagiri: In the second elephant strike in less than a week, a 50-year-old farmer was trampled to death by a tusker at Maharajakadai on the Krishnagiri-Kuppam road on Wedesday night. Angry relatives of the deceased farmer, M. Chinnapayyan, ransacked the forest department office, laid his body on the road and staged a protest.
On September 11, an elephant trampled a 45-year-old woman, R. Saraswathy, near Krishnagiri, off the Bengaluru-Chennai highway. As the Krishnangiri forests are dry with inadequate waterholes, elephants are straying out of the jungles in search of water, say forest officials. In the last three years, 17 people have died in elephant attacks in Krishnagiri district.
According to villagers of Maharajakottai, 12 elephants entered the village on Wednesday night and remained in the fields, a few metres from the human habitation here. A tusker in the herd charged at the villagers when they tried to drive the elephants back into the forest. The drive was conducted without the help of trained elephant chasers in the forest department, leading to trouble.
The tusker chased the villagers who fled. But Chinnapayyan, unable to run, climbed and sat atop a tree. Later in the night, he climbed down from the tree without noticing the herd because of the darkness and was trampled to death.
His angry relatives ransacked the forest office in Maharajakadai. They also kept Chinnapayyan’s body on the road and resorted to a road roko, disrupting traffic on the busy Krishnagiri-Kuppam road. They demanded that the forest officials end the elephant menace. The road roko continued till Wednesday midnight, disrupting traffic for more than three hours on the Krishnagiri-Kuppam road.
Next Story
