A rogue elephant that killed four persons in the last three days in Purnia district of Bihar was shot dead by Hyderabad sharp-shooter Nawab Shafath Ali Khan and his team of forest officials on Saturday morning.
The 35-year-old tusker strayed into Bihar from Nepal four days ago and created havoc in some villages of the district.
On Wednesday, a teenager was killed by the elephant, while three others were trampled to death in the following two days.
On Saturday, the tusker killed another person and damaged a house.
“We tried to tranquilise it and translocate it. But it continued to destroy property and kill people.
It was moving towards human habitations and posing a risk. Finally, on instructions of the forest officials who were accompanying me, I shot it with a .458 Winchister Magnum bullet and it collapsed. It was inevitable,” Mr. Shafath Ali told The Hindu over phone from Bihar.
A team of trained mahouts from West Bengal were also assisting their Bihar counterparts and forest officials for last two days to translocate it. A few thousand villagers had also gathered in the village outskirts to prevent the tusker from moving into the villages but to no avail, he explained.
P.K. Gupta, Regional Chief Conservator of Forest and District Forest Officer S.S. Singh, IFS supervised the operation for the last four days.
A team of veterinary doctors conducted post-mortem examination of the elephant and found that it was wounded in the trunk and perhaps became aggressive due to it.
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