GUWAHATI: The Assam forest department’s hunt for the “terror” elephant, “Laden” has received a setback with the death of one of the two domesticated elephants engaged to track the tusk-less male jumbo on Saturday.
“The elephant was ailing for a long time and had developed a bloated stomach day on Friday. It was being looked after by a team of veterinary doctors and administered saline as well. However, its condition deteriorated yesterday before it passed away in the evening,” Goalpara divisional forest officer, A Goswami told The Shillong Times on Sunday.
The forest department has been on the hunt for the makhna, suspected to be one of the 50 migratory elephants from Garo Hills along the Assam-Meghalaya border, for the past 15 days.
However, the highly mobile male elephant, which is about nine feet tall, has so far managed to camouflage itself well in the wilds, thereby making the hunt a challenging one.
“The other kunthi (domesticated elephant) though is fine. But we will have to explore other methods to track ‘Laden’ now. Tomorrow, we will take up the matter with principal chief conservator of forests (PCCF) and see how we can capture the elephant at the earliest,” Goswami said.
Goalpara forest division comprises three ranges – Rangjuli, Krishnai and Goalpara.
Sources said the forest department had taken the domesticated elephants to Rangjuli from Guwahati.
Over the past few weeks, the incidence of man-elephant conflicts in the forest division has been on the rise. A villager was trampled to death by an elephant on Thursday.
The forest department, for its part, has been monitoring the situation round the clock and also alerting villagers through text messages and meetings about the vulnerable areas and the methods to follow upon sighting wild elephants.
“Laden will definitely be a threat to villagers who venture inside the reserved forests of the division. However, he cannot be declared a rogue yet and we are preparing a dossier in this regard. But what’s made our hunt difficult is that it has adapted very well to the environment, camouflaging its massive structure in the wilds to evade us,” Goswami said.
There are 56 reserved forests and 47 proposed reserved forests covering an area of 361 sq km under Goalpara forest division. Between these forests are fragmented revenue lands with crop lands, making the inhabitants vulnerable to attacks by wild elephants.