11-member team of mahouts from Bengal to drive away wild elephants

26-year-old man injured in tusker attack

Jamshedpur: Forest Department has roped in an 11-member team of mahouts from Bankura district of Bengal that reached Chandil on Sunday. The team will drive away the herd of wild elephants that had been causing menace in the Chandil and Ichagarh in the adjoining Seraikela-Kharsawan district.

The mahouts from Bengal reached here after the Chandil forest range officer Ashok Kumar took the initiative for carrying out the elephant driving job jointly. The local mahouts who were from Chandil were opposing the entry of mahouts from Bengal and threatened that they would disturb in elephant-driving work.

” We have roped in a Bankura-based team of mahouts who are skilled in driving wild elephants effectively has reached at Chandil. The Bengal team will work jointly with a five-member local team,” said Ashok Kumar.

Kumar said they had engaged three teams of local mahouts, comprising 15 mahouts in each team for driving the herd of 10 elephants which has been destroying paddy crops and also damaging houses in the Chandil and Ichagarh since the past three weeks.

“As per our experience the local teams were not efficient enough to do their job and the herd of elephants continued to destroy houses, the villagers had got wary of the local teams who later accepted our proposal to drive the elephants by carrying out the job jointly,” said the forest officer.

Meanwhile, a 26-year-old man Satya Ranjan Das was seriously injured as a herd of six wild elephants chased him at Ashna village under Chakulia forest range in East Singhbhum district this morning.

Das, who is a resident of Ghotiduma village in Ghatshila was watching the herd from a close distance at 8 am today, one of the elephants chased him, causing him to fall down in a ditch.

People are in state of havoc due to such menace. Sometimes villagers migrate to safer places for a week or more to avoid the sudden night-time attacks of the wild elephant herds.
�We are forced to spend sleepless nights.

Our lives are at risk due to rampaging elephants. Elephants regularly venture into villages, destroy houses, damage standing crops and even trample people to death. We are forced to work like a �night guard� to save our lives and crops� said a villager. The herd has entered into Seraikela jungle in November end and ever since it is moving around from one jungle to another beside straying into human habitats for eating paddy crops and harvested paddy every night.

Revealing about the operation, an official said that the team has started studying the elephant corridor in Seraikela today.