A baby elephant, which was a part of a herd of 17 jumbos roaming in Tati Jharia and Daru blocks of Hazaribagh district since the last 4-5 days, died on Monday night in lokaiya village of Daru block. On Monday night the herd entered into lokaiya village from Padwar forest area and started destroying the houses, agro-fields, trees etc. in the village. During this rampage when the herd entered into a house after breaking its side wall, the roof suddenly collapsed and a baby elephant died on the spot.
After the death of baby elephant other members of the herd became violent and started breaking the houses of other villagers. The villagers saved themselves by taking shelter in the cemented school building. The jumbos reached there and demolished the old building of primary school.
The villagers of Irga panchayat of Daru block and Bharajo panchayat of Tati Jharia are in panic after this incident. Most of the villagers have decided to leave their houses atleast in the night till the herd goes out of their area. Since the past 4-5 days this herd has destroyed several houses, ate stored food grains, crushed crops and had killed many pet animals but after Monday night’s incident it seems that now the villagers are in their target.
After getting the information on Tuesday morning a team of forest officials visited lokaiya village. DFO Ajit Kumar Singh and ACF Pramod Kumar Agrawal took a close look of the situation. In their presence post-mortem of the baby elephant was done and was then buried by the forest staff.
Both Singh and Agrawal said that the department has called the jumbo experts from Purulia, West Bengal, to push out the herd from this area. They also promised to deploy forest staffs in the area to help the villagers in case of emergency.
last night the violent jumbos destroyed the houses of Chotan Hansda, Guddu Hansda, KD Manjhi, Ratani Devi, Kartik Soren, Mahesh Sinku and Mahilal Manjhi. Besides this they damaged the standing crops of more than a dozen villagers. On Sunday before this herd was in Irga where it has damaged the houses of Gulli Yadav, Munsi Yadav, Ramchandra Yadav, Sohan Yadav, Bhuvaneshwar Yadav, Jalal Yadav and Basudev Yadav. The political parties have demanded from district administration to give immediate relief to the victims.