The injured elephant. Telegraph picture

Sukna, March 19: As the life of an elephant hit by a goods train here on Wednesday ebbed away, the outcry against the Northeast Frontier Railway reached a crescendo today.

The Calcutta chapter of WWF, the wildlife watchdog, is considering taking legal action against the railway that, it alleges, is flouting directives of Calcutta High Court aimed at protecting animals.

“The railway authorities are guilty of violating high court orders. We are consulting our lawyers and intend to initiate legal proceedings,” said S.R. Banerjee, the state director of the WWF.

The elephant, which was hit by the speeding train while crossing the tracks at Gulma in the Sukna range, suffered multiple fractures in its hip bones and gangrene on the base of its tail. Though medicines are being administered, there is not much the forest department can do to save her.

“Her chances of survival are bleak. She is not eating anything and has been lying on her side for more than 48 hours. Being heavy, internal organs like the lungs collapse if they lie for a long period,” said Raju Das, the divisional forest officer-I of Darjeeling.

Additional principal chief conservator of forest Udayan Dasgupta, who was in Sukna today, said: “Many of the routes elephants migrate through have been encroached upon. Others are either private or vested land and cannot be acquired by the forest department.”

“We had taken up the matter at a meeting with the Jalpaiguri administration last year. It was suggested that the stretches of the elephant corridor that are private property would be acquired, and vested land reformed and transferred to the forest department. But the administration seems busy with more important matters,” he added.

Dasgupta, however, downplayed the court directive. “Though the WWF had filed a public interest litigation, the court never gave a specific ruling,” he said.

Forest officials said there are three main migratory herds of elephants, which walk the forests of north Bengal while migrating to and from Assam and Nepal.

The three herds spend most of their time in the Buxa-Sankosh, Sankosh-Reti-Bandapani and Diana-Gorumara-Bagdogra-Naxalbari stretches.

The railway tracks pass through migratory corridors at 15 places. Since 2000, when locomotives began using the 120-km Siliguri-Alipurduar rail route, there have been 10 elephant deaths. The forest department has no record of injuries to animals in rail accidents.