From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: Two wild elephants were electrocuted in a paddy field at Chargua in Sivasagar on Tuesday night by some miscreants. The villagers spotted carcass on one of the elephants in the paddy field and another in a nearby forest.
Forest officials rushed to the spot in the morning and retrieved the carcasses. A probe has been launched.
Sources said a herd of elephants had been on a rampage in the area destroying and devouring ripe paddy of the villagers. Some miscreants might have placed high tension electric conductor across the paddy field to scare away the herd of elephants.
A prominent wildlife conservationist in Assam, Dr BP Lahkar informed that shrinkage of forest cover and fragmentation of migration corridors of elephants which are long ranging animals by nature, across the state were the root cause behind the raging man-elephant conflict in the state.
According to data placed in the Assam Assembly in February this year, the death toll in man-elephant conflicts in the state has crossed 1,000 since the year 2010 that include 761 human casualties and 249 elephant deaths.