KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, May 21: A wild elephant trampled a 69-year-old man at a village under the Chowka thana area in the adjoining Seraikela-Kharsawan district about 40 km away from here early this morning.
The incident has taken place at Khunti village in Chowka at about 5 am while the victim identified as Lilkant Mahto was going to meet nature’s call.
It was a lone tusker that attacked the elderly man and having trampled him to death, it had strayed into the cornfield and was on a rampage there.
As the elephant was behaving aggressively, the villagers got frightened and went over to a safe place. They returned to their village after Tusker had disappeared into an adjoining jungle.
Listening to the trampling death at Khunti village, a team of forest department officials reached the village and paid Rs 50,000 as compensation to the victim’s family members.
A forest official said the Rs 50,000 that they paid to the victim’s family is a part out of Rs four lakhs towards the compensation package. The remaining Rs 3.5 lakhs would be paid after the paperwork is completed.
A police team also arrived at the spot and seized the body to the Seraikela Sadar Hospital for postmortem.
The forest department sources said the department’s functionaries including foresters and range officers used to keep tabs on the migrating herds of elephants.
“But whenever an elephant is separated from the herd, it starts behaving aggressively and tends to enter into human habitat,” observed the official while talking to lagatar24.com.
