Jamshedpur, Dec. 14: A wild elephant was electrocuted after coming in contact with a high-tension line at Rankui jungle under Manjhari police station area in West Singhbhum district, in the wee hours of Monday. This was the fifth case of electrocution of a tusker in West Singhbhum in the past six month.
The tusker which was in a herd came to the jungle and while crossing the stretch it came in contact with 11,000 KV overhead power line belonging to Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd (JBVNL). In the morning when the villagers saw the dead tusker they started protesting and blamed the forest department for negligence.
“We came to know about the incident when villagers started protesting. It is really a sad incident. We are probing the mishap as per our information the tusker was electrocuted while moving toward a pond, and the fatal mishap took place due to the high-tension line,” said an official of the department.
He said they will get a post-mortem of the carcass for which they are making arrangement. The forest officer said they will conduct an enquiry regarding the electrocution of the tusker and lodge a complaint against the power department regarding this all.
An official of the forest department said that it’s the beginning of the migration season and so is the elephant menace. At several parts of the twin districts of Singhbhum, paddy crops were destroyed by herds of tuskers that have begun their annual migration through the villages.
Moreover, recently a carcass of a tusker was found lying at Sirum jungle close to the Bengal border. The department suspects that a gang of poachers might be active in the Chandil forest range which is located in the foothill of Dalma. The carcass of a tusker was found lying at Sirum jungle close to Bengal border under Nimdih police station area in the adjoining Seraikela-Kharsawan district.
