According to Saket Badola, deputy director, CTR, two daily wagers, Veer Singh (36) and Pankaj Kumar (34) who had come to Bijrani rang were returning to Mailani post of the same range at 5 pm. It was when they did not reach Mailani, then the staff of the area enquired about them and in the search, bodies of both the victims were found by patrolling units at 10 pm.
‘The chest of Veer Singh was completely trampled by the elephant while Pankaj Kumar was also quite injured. The footmarks and dung all around suggested that a herd was present in the area. It seems both accidently ran into a herd of elephants which had calves. This made elephants insecure about the safety of their babies and prompted them to trample the victims ,” said Badola.
He said, the families of the victims would be paid ex-gratia amount of Rs three lakh from forest department, Rs two lakh from Tiger Corbett Foundation, Rs two lakh from National Tiger Conservation Authority and some more financial help from the NGO’s working in the tiger reserve.
This is the not the first incident of human-animal conflict but one after another in four incidents , one in each months which claimed three lives and one injury of the forest employees in the area has been occurring in the Corbett. In the month of February itself , a daily wager employee was also killed by tiger in the Kalagarh division of the Corbett.
Dhananjay Mohan, chief conservator of forests said, “We can not deduce anything from these incidents, as these are just coincidences that forest employees have been killed by animals in Corbett.”
On March 22, another patrolling staff was also attacked and killed near Sadle dam in Corbett in the early afternoon. Third on April 9 in the VIP area of Khinanauli in Corbett, where tiger killed a patrolling guard in the broad day light. In May too, a forest employee was critically injured by one tigress.