Blame game ensued between Bengal Government and the Indian Railways with each side blaming the other for Wednesday’s elephant deaths.
While junior Railway Minister Adhir Chowdhury gave a clean chit to the train driver saying the place where the pachyderms were run over by the speeding Kaviguru Express was outside the stated “elephant corridor” where the trains are required to maintain a speed limit.
However, State Forest Minister Hiten Burman blamed the railways for repeatedly ignoring the State’s plea to rein in its drivers. “We have filed FIRs against the railways and the officials concerned,” said Burman adding “negligence on the part of the Railway authorities have reached a ghastly level.”
Ghastly because pachyderm corpses and their limbs still lay strewn around the area with some of the bodies getting struck between the girders of the Jaldhaka bridge where the accident happened.
That some of the corpses were thrown more than 40 feet apart was a shrieking evidence of the speed the train was hurtling at, a local Railway official requesting anonymity said.
While seven elephants died on Wednesday and another four were still being treated around the spot where they were thrown off many more, perhaps half-a-dozen of the same herd were wandering around the area with grievous wounds, forests officials feared.