M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Nov 8: A 30-year-old male elephant was killed with a live 11,000 KV power line at a paddy field of village Labher under the Garu West range of the Palamu tiger reserve. The elephant’s body was found today in a paddy field of a farmer Sahadur Singh at Labher village under the range of the Garu West of the tiger reserve.
After the incident, Sahadur Singh escaped. PTR officials have caught two people-Sahadur’s wife Ishmatia Devi and Narayan Singh who is his close relative.
Deputy director South division of the PTR Mukesh Kumar has confirmed this casualty. He said the arrested people will be produced in the court of CJM Latehar. Section of hunting under the Wildlife Protection Act has been invoked against the three out of whom two stand arrested by now.
PTR officials have stepped up to look out for the runaway farmer Sahadur Singh the main accused of killing the elephant with live electricity wire.
Sources said this is a frank case of man-elephant conflict in PTR. The elephant was killed with vengeance by the live electricity wire. Its body being found in the paddy field proves this casualty of the elephant to be of a man in conflict with the elephant.
A team of 3 doctors including Ravi Nandan, Pramod Kumar and Mira Singh conducted the postmortem. Mukesh Kumar said the postmortem team recovered a bullet from the body of the dead elephant.
He said this bullet is old enough as this elephant was living with it. There was just an old wound on the top of the body of the elephant having puss around. The elephant had no instance of any recent or last night shoot at it.
Chief conservator of forest and field director PTR Kumar Ashutosh said the murderer of the elephant would face the music. “We wait for the postmortem findings of the elephant,” he said.
PTR officials have recovered a peeled-off portion of the insulated electrical wire used to kill this elephant with live 11,000 kv electricity.
