A herd of elephants, which has apparently turned aggressive after the death of a young member, is keeping foresters on their toes.
Two policemen were injured when members of the herd charged at them in Bankura’s Bishnupur on Thursday evening. The policemen escaped with minor injuries.
“The calf was found dead on Wednesday morning near the West Midnapore-Bankura border. Electrocution is not ruled out. The herd has since turned aggressive, especially the female members. It is not unnatural. Elephants are extremely social. The herd is very protective when it comes to their young,” said a senior forest official.
“The herd is charging at human beings. The two cops were lucky to have escaped with minor bruises. At the moment, our main aim is to keep humans away from the herd and give the jumbos a safe passage.”
The herd was on a road connecting Bankadaha and Joyrambati in Bankura, around 15km from Bishnupur, on Thursday evening.
“Despite our efforts, many people had gathered to see the herd. Our men, along with the cops, were busy setting up a barricade. Suddenly, an elephant charged at the two policemen,” said Anjan Guha, divisional forest officer (DFO) in the Panchet division in Bishnupur.
Guha called it a “mock charge”, which he said was more of an effort to scare the people away.
“Had it been a serious attack, the two would not have escaped with minor injuries,” he said.
The two policemen were discharged from the hospital on Thursday, he said.
Around 36 hours earlier, a female calf that was part of the herd was found dead in a cashew plantation in a West Midnapore village, around 500m from the border with Bankura.
The herd was moving towards Bankura from West Midnapore.
“The herd was scattered. The calf, aged five to six years, was found in a cashew plantation in Garbeta. Our men spotted it around 5am,” said Manish Yadav, DFO of Rupnarayanpur.
“Initially, we suspected electrocution. But a preliminary report did not confirm that. We have to send the samples to the lab for further tests to know the actual reason. For now, cardiovascular failure seems to be the cause of death,” he said.
A probe has started and the owner of the land where the calf was found was being questioned, he said.
On Friday afternoon, the herd was in the Sonamukhi forests in Bankura. “There are 42 elephants in the herd. We are tracking it round-the-clock. We are disseminating real-time information, including bulk messages to people living in nearby villages to stay off the herd,” said Umar Imam, DFO of the Bankura North division, under whose jurisdiction the Sonamukhi forest falls.
Though called Dalma elephants because they trace their roots to the Dalma hills of Jharkhand, the pachyderms now spend most of the year roaming the forests of south Bengal.
Forest officials have attributed the change in the pattern to the relatively easier availability of food, both in the forests and the farmlands that border the forests.
A rise in the elephant population and the time they spend in south Bengal are behind the surge in the human-wildlife conflict in the western districts of Bengal, according to foresters.
