Villager killed by wild elephant in Chhattisgarh

A wild elephant attacked and killed a villager in Chhattisgarh's Jashpur district, the fifth such death reported from the area in just over a month, a forest department official said Friday.

The latest incident of elephant attack took place Thursday evening in Birimadgea village when the deceased, identified only as Amrit, was working at his farmland, said Krishna Kumar Jadhav, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Jashpur Division.

The 45-year-old villager failed to notice the wild tusker, which had separated from its herd, entering his agriculture field, he said.

All of a sudden, the jumbo caught hold of Amrit, lifted him with its trunk and slammed him on the ground, killing him on the spot, Jadhav said.

On being alerted about the incident, forest and police personnel rushed to the spot and sent the body for post -mortem, he said.

With this, five persons have been killed in separate incidents of elephant attack in Jashpur district since May 3.

Jashpur shares borders with neighbouring Odisha and Jharkhand and the dense forest at this tri-junction is a prime habitat of elephants.

Forest officials from Jharkhand and Odisha have been asked to share inputs about the cross-border movement of elephants so that a strategy can be chalked out to check human -animal conflict, Jadhav said.

Several incidents of human-elephant conflict have been reported in the past from the thick forested northern Chhattisgarh, consisting of Surguja, Surajpur, Korba, Raigarh, Jashpur, Balrampur and Korea districts.

The region has witnessed killing of several tribals and widespread damage to houses and crops by rogue elephants.