ROURKELA: Forest personnel on Tuesday evening guided a female elephant and its calf safely out of the campus of National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) in an operation that lasted for nearly 14 hours.
Officials of Rourkela forest division said the elephants entered the NIT-R campus in the wee hours of Tuesday. At around 5 am, security guards of the institute spotted the pachyderms and alerted the authorities.
On being informed, a team led by Rourkela divisional forest officer (DFO) Jaswant Sethi reached the spot to take stock of the situation. The forest team managed to confine the elephant and its calf in a plantation area of the campus and continuously monitored their movements using infra-red drone camera.
A portion of the campus was also secured with temporary solar fencing to stop the elephants from entering the residential and academic premises. The backside perimeter wall of the sprawling campus was broken at three places to allow smooth passage to the elephants towards the connecting Durgapur hill forest.
The DFO said at sundown, the elephants were safely guided out of the campus towards the adjacent forest. It is believed that the elephants got separated from the herd. After moving through the Durgapur hill forest, the jumbos broke open the connecting boundary wall of NIT-R at one place to enter the campus. Unable to find an escape route, the elephants stayed put on the institute premises and roamed in the forested portion of the campus.