12-year-old girl among two trampled to death by wild elephants in Assam
Guwahati: In what has become a major area of concern, two persons, including a 12-year-old girl and a woman, were trampled to death by wild elephants in two separate incidents in Assam’s Tinsukia and Goalpara districts.
It is significant that this has come within a week when four people, including a woman and two children were trampled to death by a herd of elephants in Karbi Anglong district on November 23.
The first incident was reported from Tinsukia’s Doom Dooma area where a minor girl was attacked and killed by an adult male elephant when she was returning home from a religious event with her family.
Divisional forest officer of Tinsukia district Mriganka Bora said that the incident took place around 1:30 am on Sunday.
“We did patrolling in that area on Saturday night, hours before the incident happened. The elephant was not a part of the herd and, unfortunately, we did not notice it. The other family members managed to escape the attack but the minor girl could not run fast,” he said.
Mr Bora said that the family members informed them about the incident and a team of forest officials reached the spot. The injured girl was taken to a nearby local hospital, where the doctors declared her dead, he said.
The second incident took place in Goalpara’s Tengabari area, in which a 40-year-old woman accidentally came in front of a wild elephant in the early hours of Monday and was trampled to death.
The forest officials said that the deceased woman, identified as Saharbhanu Nessa, was a resident of the Tengabari area. She had gone to their agricultural land for cultivation, according to her family members.
The incident triggered an angry protest by local villagers who alleged that the forest department was not taking adequate steps to avoid and prevent man-elephant conflicts.
The forest officials said that more than 10 such incidents have been reported from various parts of Assam this year so far. In one incident, an on-duty forest official was also killed.
On November 23, four people, including a woman and two children were trampled to death by a herd of elephants in Karbi Anglong district, according to a district official.
Officials from the forest department said that the elephants attacked the two adults and the children at Laloobasti in the Bokajan section of the district after they were returning from an agricultural field.
