A female elephant and her calf got electrocuted on Tuesday as they came in touch with a live electric wire allegedly laid by a local at a farm in Chhattisgarh’s Surajpur district, forest officials said. “The incident took place in the wee hours at a sugarcane field in Bagda village under Pratappur forest range,” Division Forest Officer (Surajpur division) Naved Shujauddin told PTI.
As per preliminary information, the adult pachyderm and her female calf came in contact with the live wire laid around the sugarcane field allegedly by the farm owner to protect his crop from the wild animals, he said. Soon after being informed about the incident, forest and police officials rushed to the spot and shifted the carcasses for postmortem, the DFO said.
“Action will be taken against the farm owner after receiving the autopsy report,” he said, adding that a case has been registered in this connection. The thick forested northern Chhattisgarh, consisting of Surguja, Korba, Surajpur, Raigarh, Jashpur and Korea districts, is known for human-animal conflicts.
The region has witnessed several killings of tribals as well as elephants and widespread damage to houses and crops by rogue pachyderms in the past years. Sometimes, the locals illegally lay the electric wires around their farms to prevent wild elephants from destroying their crops.
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