BHUBANESWAR: The elephant that trampled four persons to death and injured six others, kept forest officials on their toe as it sneaked into Patrapada in the early hours of Monday.
Forest officials have been on the field for more than 36 hours to drive it away to Chandaka forest, but have not succeeded in it so far.
City divisional forest officer AK Mishra said the wild elephant, which is in distress after being chased by people in Puri and Khurda division, is hiding in the forest plantation area of Patrapada on the city outskirts.
Around 60 forest guards of city forest division and forest staff from Chandaka division are closely tracking its movement, he said.
"The tusker is in distress and is moving within the plantation area. We will facilitate its movement to Chandaka forest division in the evening which is around 7 km away from Patrapada," Mishra said.
Forest officials said that the tusker which moved to Delanga area of Puri in search of food on Saturday, went on a rampage after it was teased and chased by some people with fire torch on late on Saturday night in villages in Puri and Khurda forest division.
The wild elephant which trampled four persons to death and injured six others on Sunday, also reportedly attacked a women in Ghatikia early morning on Monday leaving her injured.
Forest officials, however, said that the woman was among the onlookers and sustained an injury as she fell on the ground when the crowd started running after the elephant came nearer.
On Sunday, the elephant attacked 60-year-old Jugal Kishore Bhatt in his field in Gopinathpur panchayat. It also trampled Chaitanya Sahu (45) of Rajtei village and Makara Palei (65) of Matighar village in Khurda forest division to death on the day. In the evening, the tusker also killed Ajay Nayak (45) in Jamalpur village.
Khurda DFO Sudeep Nayak said that they have requested people in villages within their range not to tease the elephants during their movement to prevent such attacks.