A tusker wild elephant crushed a 60-year-old man to death in Chhattisgarh’s Korba district. Giving information about this, officials said on Thursday that the incident took place on Wednesday night in Thadapkhan village under Pali forest sub-area when the deceased Mewaram Dhanuhar was at his home.
Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Katghora forest division, Kumar Nishant, said that upon sensing the presence of the elephant, Mewaram went to his vegetable garden behind the house, but when the elephant also reached there, he came in front of it.
He said that the elephant caught Mewaram with its trunk and crushed him to death. He also said that earlier on Wednesday, the same tusker elephant had attacked and killed a bull in the nearby Mudabhata village.
Kumar Nishant said that as soon as the information about the death of the person was received, the employees of the forest and police department reached the spot and sent the body for postmortem. The officer said that an immediate relief amount of Rs 25,000 has been provided to the family of the deceased, while the remaining compensation of Rs 5.75 lakh will be given after completing the formalities. Actually, there is a provision of giving a compensation of Rs 6 lakh by the state government in case of death by an elephant.
The DFO said that teams of forest personnel are monitoring the movement of the elephant moving towards the Chotia range. Human-elephant conflict has been a major cause of concern in the northern part of Chhattisgarh for the last decade. In the last few years, this problem has also spread to some districts in the central region of the state. Such attacks have been reported from Surguja, Raigarh, Korba, Surajpur, Mahasamund, Dhamtari, Gariaband, Balod, Balrampur and Kanker districts.
According to the forest department, about 310 people have been killed in elephant attacks in the state in the last five years. Officials said that last month elephants killed three women at two places in Korba district.
