COIMBATORE: A 58-year-old woman, who was sleeping in her house, died and two others were injured after a Makhna elephant demolished the wall of her house at Valavayal near Pandalur in the Nilgiris district on Saturday night.
The deceased has been identified as Pappathi and the injured are Sundarmbal (60) and her husband Ramalingam. The trio are related and were inside the house. Though forest staff are monitoring the movement of the elephant, the animal, identified as PM 2 (Pandalur Makhna 2), demolished Pappathi’s house at 9.30pm on Saturday.
According to D Venkatesh “We have formed a total of 20 elephant depredation watchers in the last two days particularly to track PM2 and prevent the animal from damaging houses.” Though the injured persons were taken to the Gudalur government hospital for treatment, their relatives and other villagers staged a protest refusing to allow the deceased body to be taken for postmortem.
The villagers also demanded the Tamil Nadu forest department to capture the Makhna animal. After three hours, the protest was called off at 1am on Sunday after the forest department assured that they will take necessary steps along with the revenue and police.
“Not few weeks, two Makhna elephants including the one that demolished the house of Pappathi have been damaging houses in and around Pandalur for more than a year,” said a villager Meanwhile, two Kumki elephants Wasim and Vijay from Theppakkadu elephant camp in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) were brought to Valavayal to chase away the PM 2 inside the forest. According to sources, post mortem for Papapathi is expected to be carried out on Monday at Udagamandalam government hospital.