Injured elephant with missing tusks succumbs

The 25-year-old male jumbo was found dead in the mud pit at the foot of the Pancharatna hills yesterday with severe injuries, official sources said today.

Villagers first spotted the elephant writhing in pain and in a pool of blood at the foothills of the Pancharatna hills in the Goalpara forest range and immediately informed the police and forest officials.

Since then forest department officials with veterinary doctors were attending to the jumbo and tried several times to lift it onto the ground from the pit which lay in an inaccessible low-lying area, but without success, the sources said.

Forest department officials claimed that the elephant was initially injured during a fight with another jumbo and had his tusks broken and part of the trunk severed then.

Local people and animal conservationists, however, differed, claiming that the animal was wounded by poachers who sawed away its tusks and the tip of its trunk.