Wild elephant ransacked camp, hit security man

Agartala, Jun 12 (UNI) In a violent attack of wild elephant in North Maharanipur village under Kalyanpur police station under Khowai district of West Tripura a special police officer (SPO), civil village defence volunteers was injured and a security camp was destructed. This was the third attack of the wild elephant herds in Kalyanpur areas in last ten days where a huge amount of agricultural crops and houses were damaged in separate attacks of the elephant last night. According to report, suddenly an elephant attacked the SPO camp at midnight when most of the volunteers of 13 members’ team were in rest. Two of them were on sentry duty at the post.When all of them tried to run away, one Nibas Sarkar got a hit by the elephant and he rolled down to a ditch. However, he could able to escape from the spot along with others. The angry elephant ransacked the camp and destroyed it completely for more than an hour. Later, Wildlife officials went to the spot but could not able to locate the elephant. Wildlife officials however, pointed out that Kalyanpur area has now become a corridor of wild elephants living in Athuramura hill range that connected to eastern fringe of Chittagong Hill Tract of Bangladesh. But in recent years after ends of insurgence in Tripura, human activity raised manifold in the hill range that affected the food-chain and movements of elephants. “The elephants often came to crop filed and human habitation in search of food, as in the forest there is inadequacy of food in recent times. The latest census estimates, Tripura is housing about 59 mature elephants and forest department raised plantation for elephant food. But it seems still there is shortage in the forest and regular human activity in their corridor irritating them and elephants become revengeful,” said a wildlife official here. He further stated that the state government has been pursuing for setting up of an elephant reserve across the corridor to ensure their safe life and habitation but due to financial problem it was not yet successful. UNI