Jaigaon, March 31: A bison gored five persons, including a woman, in Choonabhati tea garden near Banarhat this morning and later died from shock after being chased and tranquillised by the forest department.

According to senior assistant manager of the garden Debjyoti Nag, the five were preparing to join work when the bison suddenly appeared in the labour colony and started attacking people.

Nag said Ananda Lepcha (37), Pradip Nayek (31), Manga Munda (28), Bikash Nayek (21), and Janki Nag (37) were first sent to garden hospital and then to Jalpaiguri district hospital.

“I immediately went to the spot and arranged for the injured to be taken to hospital and informed the forest department about the incident,” said Nag.

“While the bone in Pradip’s thigh was broken, others had injuries inflicted by the animal’s horns on their arms, legs and heads. Since we have little infrastructure, I referred the injured to the Jalpaiguri district hospital,” said the garden hospital doctor, R.N. Chowdhury.

The Binnaguri forest ranger, S. Das, along with guards, arrived at Choonabhati within half-an-hour of the attack and tried to chase the bison away. After failing to get the animal out of the labour colony, it was shot at by a tranquillised dart at 7am and carried to the Gorumara forest on a truck.

Sahabuddin Golder, a vet, said the bison was brought to Gorumara at 11.20am. “Although we pushed in an antidote and administered two bottles of saline, the animal died of heart failure,” said Golder.

This is the third bison to die in the past four days in the area. The other two had died in Nageswari and Juranti tea gardens. The foresters said the animals had died from shock at being chased by hundreds of villagers.

Divisional forest officer Tapas Das said bison were straying into the gardens because of jungle fires. The medical expenses of the injured would be borne by the forest department.