BHOPAL: Two villagers were trampled to death by wild elephants in separate incidents in the Umaria district of eastern Madhya Pradesh on Saturday morning.
One villager who was hurt in one of the incidents has been hospitalised and is now out of danger.
While one incident happened in the buffer zone of the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR), the other took place in one of the villages located outside the BTR territory.
The two deceased men have been identified as Ram Ratan Yadav (62) and Bhairav Kol (35). Another villager identified as Malu Sahu, meanwhile, was injured in one of the incidents, while he was harvesting the standing paddy crop in his fields.
The two incidents happened between 8 am and 9 am, just a day after 10 wild elephants (including one male and nine females, two of them being pregnant) died in the Salkhaniya jungles of the BTR.
With the 13-strong herd now left with only three elephants (including an adult and two semi adults), forest department officials in the area suspect that the three elephants involved in the twin tragedies on Saturday morning may be the remaining members of the same herd of jumbos.
“Elephants are social animals and don’t easily forget the loss of herd members. From the details given by the residents of village where the incidents happened on Saturday morning, three elephants, including an adult and two semi-adults, are involved. We suspect that the remaining members of the same herd (particularly the adult) have attacked humans in fury at the deaths of ten elephants. We’ve formed multiple teams to search for the three elephants and rescue them after tranquilization,” a senior forest department official posted in the concerned region of eastern MP told The New Indian Express.
The twin tragedies happened while the entire top brass of the state forest department, particularly the wildlife wing, is camping in the BTR and holding meetings to ascertain the cause of the deaths of the ten elephants inside the tiger reserve.
The top brass, including forest minister Ramniwas Rawat and senior bureaucrats and forest officials of the department rushed to BTR on Saturday, hours after the state’s CM Dr Mohan Yadav held a meeting with them over the deaths of the ten jumbos.
According to informed sources, the CM wasn’t willing to buy the forest department’s theory of the ten deaths having possibly happened due to poisoning by mycotoxin present in the standing Kodo millet crop, which was consumed in large volumes by the 13-strong elephant herd.
He is believed to have asked the department’s higher-ups to rush to the BTR and adequately probe the deaths followed by a prompt report summing up the findings.
Sources added that the central government is keeping tabs on developments in BTR after the elephant deaths. Officials of the NTCA and Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) are already in BTR in connection with the ongoing investigations.
While the state government has ordered an SIT probe into the elephant deaths, the state forest department’s wildlife crime investigation arm, the State Tiger Strike Force (STSF), too is probing the matter from all possible angles.
Samples of pond water, standing Kodo and paddy crops, as well as samples of the dead elephants, have been sent for forensic and toxicology analysis at multiple government labs. Viscera of the elephants has been sent for testing at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI-Bareilly) and the state forensic lab (SFL-Sagar).
While the actual cause behind the ten deaths will only be clearly known once the reports of lab tests are out, autopsy reports of the ten elephants suggest the deaths may have happened due to excessive intake of Kodo crop, which could have been poisoned by the presence of fungal mycotoxins.
Kodo is one of the prime millet crops in MP and is being aggressively promoted by the state government, out of PM Narendra Modi’s sustained vision to globally promote millets.
