Tezpur, Oct. 25: Two persons were trampled to death by wild elephants in separate incidents in Udalguri district last night.

Lorentus Minz, 60, was killed by elephants at Nunaipara tea estate while Krishna Das, 37, met with a similar fate at Kharajungal village in Udalguri district.

Minz was returning home after work at 11pm yesterday when he was attacked by a herd of nine elephants at the 65 number line of the garden. He died of his injuries while being taken to Guwahati for treatment.

At about the same time at Kharajungal village, a herd of 13 wild elephants trampled Krishna Das while he was guarding standing crops on a plot. He died on the spot.

Infuriated over the deaths, villagers of Kharajungal and Nunaipara staged an agitation against the forest department and blocked the road in front of Paneri police station on Paneri Chariali Road for three hours.

The protesters submitted a memorandum to the deputy commissioner of Udalguri, in which they alleged that the divisional forest officer and the range officer were absent from duty when the incidents took place.

Shrinking forest area and shortage of food generally force elephants to raid human habitats and farmlands and that is when the man-animal conflict starts.

“The villagers along with NGOs had been providing banana plantains to these elephants. The plantains were collected from homes and dropped in a place (corridor) where the animals come and eat them. These incidents might have taken place because the plantains were not provided in the past two weeks,” a villager told this correspondent.

Ananta Bug, chairman of Green Valley Forest Protection Society, said, “The people of Udalguri and NGOs have started a revolution to tackle man-elephant conflict. In an incident earlier this year, nine elephants and seven people were killed in the conflict, which became a serious issue for the administration.”