Midnapore, June 23: Elephants, possibly displaced by the floods and left starving, are circling relief camps in West Midnapore, drawn by the smell of molasses.

Malati Majhi, who had been having a disturbed sleep at the thought of the crumbling home that she left behind, woke up with a start on Thursday night and saw in the feeble light of a kerosene lamp the trunk of an elephant. It was sniffing around for something through a smashed window of the school building.

“Then I saw a huge dark shape outside. I thought it was an illusion. But then a chill ran down my spine,” she said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Malati, 38, a widow, had waded 200m through waist-deep water with her two sons to the school at Deulbar village.

On Thursday night, Malati shook off her exhaustion and screamed with all her might. About 450 flood victims woke up and realised a herd of four elephants had surrounded the school and were trying to make their way in.

With the few utensils and serving spoons they had salvaged from their submerged homes, they started creating a din to chase the animals away.

The four elephants have kept coming back to the Deulbar camp, 225km from Calcutta, and two others nearby every night since, leaving around 1,000 people sleepless.

Kharagpur divisional forest officer Milan Kanti Mondal said: “It appears that the elephants’ movements have been hampered by the floods and they are not getting enough food. They have smelt the food sent to the relief camps.”

The three camps have around 200kg of molasses, whose smell is intoxicating to the animals. “They can smell it from a kilometre away,” Mondal said.

He added that elephants being “very intelligent”, whenever they sense that “a group of people have gathered somewhere, they know there will be food”.

Forest officials said some of the elephants of a large herd that came from Jharkhand a few months ago had stayed back. Attempts are being made to push them back. “But forest workers are finding it difficult to carry out a full-fledged chase because of the flooding.”

Of the 22,000 flood victims of Nayagram, past which flows the Subarnarekha, around 1,000 have taken shelter in the three primary schools at Deulbar, Atmajhia and Barakhankdi villages.

Prasanta Kulya, 50, who has taken shelter at the Atmajhia camp, said the elephants had tried to enter the school building on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night.

“They tried to break open the doors and windows. We kept them at bay by creating the din, but could not light torches to scare them away as we had a meagre ration of kerosene,” said Prasanta.

The forest officer said the elephants could be desperate for food because floodwaters had left the greens rotten.

Nayagram block development officer Nirmalya Gharami admitted the kerosene scarcity. “The kerosene shortage is preventing villagers from launching hula parties (that chase away elephants). We are trying to arrange for more kerosene,” he said.