Two persons were trampled to death by a herd of wild elephants on Sunday in Sadiya subdivision of Tinsukia district in Upper Assam.
The two victims, identified as Sukheswar Das and Madan Biswas of Bormura village, had gone to Masundari chapori (sandbar) of the Brahmaputra to collect dry straws.
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“The local people informed us that two people were trampled to death by wild elephant. We immediately rushed to the place and sent the bodies for post-mortem. The duo came face to face with a rampaging herd of around 25-30 wild jumbos feasting on a paddy field. Before they could escape, the elephant herd charged at them crushing both to death,” said a forest official.
In recent times, there has been a sharp rise in human-elephant conflict in the Sadiya subdivision. In the last one month two more persons have lost their lives in wild elephants attack in separate incidents.
“For past couple of month we are having a sleepless night because the elephant straying out from forest area and trigger panic in our village. This year flood has devastated our lives and now the wild jumbos have gone into rampage in our areas,” Monikuntal Das, a villager, said.
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The growing incidents of jumbo depredation have been blamed on the shrinking of forest cover. The encroachment on elephant corridors have forced pachyderms to move out from their ecological space and stray into places of human habitation.