Jorhat, Aug. 4: The marauding elephants are not listening, but maybe the elephant-headed God will.

Unable to find a way to keep wild elephants away from their houses and crops, residents of the villages adjacent to the Gibbon wildlife sanctuary are seeking divine intervention. And who better to propitiate than Ganesh, the deity with the face of an elephant and supposedly the most benevolent in the pantheon of Hindu gods.

“Elephants have been damaging our crops and houses daily. We are at our wit’s end. Only Ganesh can save us,” says Babu Tanti, a resident of Meleng tea estate.

About 20 villages and tea estates are in the vicinity of the 19-square km Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary, which girdles the Assam-Nagaland border in Jorhat district. Residents spend sleepless nights worrying about the fate of their fields and houses as elephant herds move about in the area, destroying everything in their path.

Though there have been only two casualties in as many years, the scale of destruction caused by the elephants during this period is enormous.

Tanti claims the forest department has done precious little to ease the villagers’ woes. “The forest department has failed to protect us from these mammoth beasts. We do not know who to turn to except God.”

According to the 1999 census, the sanctuary has an elephant population of 17. But the figure keeps changing, depending on the migratory instincts of the herd.

“The population varies from period to period because the entire herd does not stay in the sanctuary throughout the year. They migrate to the adjacent Nagaland hills but come back after some time,” divisional forest officer P.K. Duwarah said.

The official admitted that the herd had become a nuisance for the villagers residing in the vicinity of the sanctuary. He said the forest department had done everything possible to prevent the herd from transgressing into human habitats, but without much success. “It may not sound good, but we have failed to end the menace,” Duwarah said.

The forest department, he said, had even “sealed” the sanctuary with electric wires. The elephants, however, uprooted the posts to make a mockery of the entire exercise.

The harassed residents of the area light fires with kerosene oil provided by the forest department and burst crackers to frighten the elephants, but even this ploy does not seem to work.

“We have been told that the elephants become more aggressive and come charging when they see people lighting fires or bursting crackers,” Duwarah said.

Residents migrate to new locations, but the nightmare does not seem to end. Pal Munda of Katonibari has rebuilt his hut 20 times during the past couple of years. “I have been shifting from one area to the other, but the elephants do not leave me alone, irrespective of where I go,” he says.

Like Tanti and hundreds of other exasperated villagers, Pal hopes Lord Ganesh will do what the forest department has failed to.