Wild elephant tramples elderly villager to death in Tripura

Agartala: An elderly villager was trampled to death by a wild elephant in Tripura's Khowai district.

The incident occurred late on Sunday night when the victim, identified as Nirodh Chowdhury, was attacked near his home in Teliamura.

The incident prompted Khowai’s District Magistrate and Collector Chandni Chandran to issue an order to tranquillise the tusker within 72 hours.

“As per the provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, to mitigate this imminent disaster, the undersigned hereby orders the District Forest Officer to tranquillise the elephant within 72 hours of the issuance of this order and rehabilitate it to the elephant camp at Mungiakami or any other place he may find appropriate,” the DM’s order read.

The victim's family will be paid Rs 5 lakh as compensation, according to a top forest department official.

Following the attack, forest and police officials, accompanied by additional forces, rushed to the village. However, tension escalated there as the angry villagers retaliated, injuring three foresters in the process.

The incident underscores the persistent challenge of human-elephant conflicts in the northeastern states like Assam and Tripura, where encounters between humans and tuskers frequently occur due to habitat encroachment and resource scarcity.

According to the forest officials, there have been instances when wild elephants ventured outside the forest areas in search of food and water and attacked people. As a precaution, people who live close to the forests occasionally put up electrical fences, which also resulted in the deaths of a few elephants.