Wolves, leopards and now, elephants. Bahraich’s tryst with wild animals is getting more precarious by the day.
A tusker entered the Girijapuri area near the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary on Tuesday night and damaged a house. Later, the elephant stomped into the adjoining Ghosiayana village, broke the forest department’s fencing and destroyed a paddy field before returning to the forest.
Abdul Salam, a forester, said: “We have advised the villagers to avoid going to their fields at night. We are keeping a watch on the movements of the elephant.”
Over 50 elephants had entered an agricultural field in Jamuniha village on Monday night and trampled about four bighas of paddy fields in two hours.
Salam said wolves and leopards frequently strayed into human habitations in Bahraich but elephants doing so was rare.
A sharp rise in wolf attacks in the past two years has left Bahraich district in Uttar Pradesh lacerated. From September 2 to October 10 alone, wolves have killed six persons in Manjhara Takauli, a cluster of villages in the district, and injured at least 35.
“We were struggling to stave off the wolves and leopards. We don’t know why the elephants are following them,” Salam said.
On Monday night, a leopard entered a house in Navinpurva Matehi hamlet under the Rampurva panchayat. Rampurva, Girijapuri and Ghosiyana are human settlements adjacent to the Nishangarh range of the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary.
Prakash Singh, a Rampurva resident, told reporters that four members of his family were sleeping when they heard the purring of a leopard inside an empty room. They ran out of the house after locking the room from outside.
“Carrying sticks and other weapons, the villagers surrounded the house. They cordoned off the house with fishnets and called forest officials. The foresters covered the house with their trap net and tranquillised the leopard,” he said.