Guwahati: Assam has recorded the highest number of elephant deaths on railway tracks in India, underlining a persistent and unresolved wildlife safety crisis despite repeated assurances and preventive measures by authorities.
Official data show that between 2009–10 and 2020–21, as many as 62 elephants were killed on railway tracks in Assam, out of 186 such deaths nationwide. While nine elephants were killed in train-related accidents in the state in 2015 alone, the toll has continued in recent years, with 16 elephants killed between 2019 and 2024.
The latest and most devastating incident occurred on Saturday, December 20, 2025, when at least seven elephants were run over by a Rajdhani Express in Nagaon district, one of Assam’s most sensitive elephant movement zones. The scale of the tragedy has sparked sharp questions about the effectiveness and on-ground implementation of the much-publicised mitigation measures.
A grim decade of accidents
Records of documented train accidents in Assam over the past decade reveal a disturbing pattern:
- September 27, 2016: Two elephants killed near the Assam–Nagaland border.
- December 5, 2016: Three elephants killed near Hojai by the Vivek Express.
- December 11, 2017: Five elephants, including a pregnant female, killed at Balipara in Sonitpur by the Guwahati–Naharlagun Express; a stillborn calf was later removed.
- February 11, 2018: Four elephants killed and one critically injured in Nagaon by the Guwahati–Silchar passenger train.
- January 2020: An adult elephant and a calf killed in the Lumding division by the Kanchenjunga Express; the adult was dragged for nearly 100 metres.
- September/October 2020: Two elephants killed in Lumding, leading to the rare seizure of a locomotive by forest officials under wildlife protection laws.
- December 11, 2020: One elephant killed at Panbari–Chandrapur near Guwahati.
- November 30, 2021: Two elephants killed near Jagiroad in Morigaon by the Dibrugarh-bound Rajdhani Express.
- December 17, 2021: One calf killed in Jorhat’s Bhelaguri–Nakachari area.
- October 9–10, 2022: Three elephants, including two adults and a calf, killed near Mariani in Jorhat by the Rajdhani Express.
- July 10, 2024: One adult male elephant killed near Jagiroad, Morigaon.
- December 20, 2025: Seven elephants killed in Nagaon district by the Rajdhani Express.
Measures on paper, deaths on tracks
The Nagaon incident has drawn attention to statements made in Parliament by Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav. On March 28, 2022, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav told the Lok Sabha that the ministry, in coordination with the Ministry of Railways, had taken a series of measures to prevent elephant deaths on railway tracks.
These include permanent coordination committees between the two ministries, speed restrictions in identified elephant corridors, construction of underpasses and ramps, fencing, warning signage for loco pilots, sensitisation of train crews, vegetation clearance, deployment of forest staff and elephant trackers, and regular coordination meetings between forest and railway officials.
Indian Railways has also highlighted the introduction of an AI-enabled Intrusion Detection System (IDS) using Distributed Acoustic Sensors to detect elephant movement near tracks. According to Railways, the system is currently operational over 141 route kilometres in vulnerable sections of the Northeast Frontier Railway and has been sanctioned for 1,158 route kilometres nationwide at a cost of Rs 208 crore.
The unanswered question
Despite these safeguards, the killing of seven elephants in a single incident in Nagaon has raised a stark question: what went wrong on December 20? Were speed restrictions enforced? Was the IDS functional in this corridor? Were forest trackers and railway control rooms alerted in time?
Conservationists and wildlife experts argue that the recurring fatalities point not to a lack of policies, but to gaps in implementation, accountability and real-time coordination on the ground. Assam, which lies at the heart of key elephant corridors in the Northeast, continues to pay the heaviest price as trains speed through habitats that elephants have used for generations.
As investigations into the Nagaon tragedy continue, the repeated loss of elephants on Assam’s railway tracks has renewed demands for stricter enforcement, transparent audits of safety systems, and an urgent rethinking of how linear infrastructure is allowed to cut through critical wildlife landscapes.