A rhino pair in Kaziranga National Park

Guwahati, Jan. 14: Two rhinos, which had strayed into a village from Kaziranga National Park last night, turned aggressive when they suddenly found themselves among people this morning and went on the rampage before one got stuck in a ditch.

For a while, villagers of Kuruabahi, about 20km from the national park, did not know how to react when they spotted the two full-grown rhinos. Though most managed to run away when chased by the animals, a 45-year-old woman was injured when one of the rhinos butted her in the abdomen.

Phuleswari Ghatowar, who works in a tea garden, had gone to a paddy field looking for her cattle, when she fell into the path of the agitated rhino.

She had to be admitted Golaghat Civil Hospital with serious internal injuries. Doctors, however, said her condition was now stable.

Soon after hitting Phuleswari, the female rhino got stuck in a ditch. The other was chased back to the park by forest rangers.

The pair had probably gone out last night with the intention of mating, a forest official said.

“But this morning when they found villagers milling around, the animals began attacking them.”

The forest department will try to pull the rhino out of the ditch tomorrow.

“There are too many people around and the rhino may turn aggressive again. We will try to pull it out tomorrow and chase it back to Kaziranga, which is about 20km from the site of the incident,” the official said.

With hundreds of villagers gathering to watch the rhino, police personnel had to be deployed at Madhupurpathar to keep the crowd in check.

“The rhino became completely helpless after it stepped into the ditch. We will have to pull it out somehow, otherwise it will become vulnerable to poachers,” an official at Kaziranga said.

A fortnight back, the carcass of a rhino was recovered from the backyard of a villager at Aphalapathar village, about 15km from the place where the rhino got stuck today.

The Kaziranga official said the recent rise in rhino population in the park is forcing animals to stray.

The rhino population at the park has crossed the 2,000. It was 1,855 just three years back, in 2006. Besides, there are 1,292 elephants, 1,400 buffaloes, 86 royal Bengal tigers and about 700 swamp deer.

Though the population boom has not yet become a serious problem, the trend indicates that there may be an acute shortage of space for animals in the near future, the official said.

The area of the national park was increased from 450 square km to 863 square km recently.

The forest official, however, said the Brahmaputra has eaten up 35 square km of the park in the past few years.

Rhino-straying has become a cause for concern for the park authorities, especially after one strayed 60km from Manas National Park last September.

The park authorities had to enlist the help of volunteers, NGOs, police and experts to monitor the rhino, which had almost reached the Bhutan border.