The rampaging elephant in the act of killing Ashit Khalko at the Pahargumia tea estate. Picture by Diptendu Dutta

Siliguri, Nov. 29: There seems to be no respite for the villagers of Hatighisa and Jamidarguri in the Naxalbari block of the district.

After sleepless nights chasing mosquitoes and tending to their family members down with malaria, they now have to guard against marauding elephants destroying standing crop and human lives.

The latest victim of an elephant?s wrath is Ashit Khalko, a 35-year-old labourer from the Bijoynagar tea estate, who was visiting friends at Atal tea garden, very near to where the incident took place today. Khalko is the fifth person in three days to have died in elephant attacks in Jalpaiguri and the Darjeeling plains.

Khalko had been among the several hundred people who had gathered in the neighbouring Pahargumia Tea Estate under Hatighisa gram panchayat to see a bunch of nine elephants, two of which were calves.

According to wildlife officials, the group had broken away from a larger herd of 70 to 80 elephants that had come down from the forests along the Bhutan-Bengal border.

?We have never seen wild elephants from such close quarters before,? said Jhoren Roy, a resident of Hatighisa and a member of the CPM district committee. He recalled that a similar herd had come down in 2002, but today?s group had entered the tea garden, which did not hold food for the elephants and seldom held their interest, he said.

?We think these elephants were driven out of the Dolkajhar forest by the larger herd from Bhutan, which has some huge tuskers among them. There were injury marks on the trunk of the elephant leading the group, suggesting that there had been a fight,? Roy said. It was this elephant that, on being provoked, ended Khalko?s life. The labourer had apparently had a little too much to drink and, in a wild display of bravado, decided to take on the group. He went dangerously close waving his hands and shouting jao, jao.

The leader, who was in charge of the calves, felt threatened. After twice warning the man with a stomp of his foreleg, he charged at him, took him by his trunk and threw him to the ground. When Khalko stood up, the animal once again picked him up with his trunk and threw him to the ground. Then, bending down, he crushed the man with his head.

The crowds had by then fled helter skelter, as two other adult elephants had also charged out. The group then gathered and lumbered through the tea garden towards Uttamchand forest, south of Pahargumia. The villagers took a limp Khalko to the nearest hospital where he was declared dead.

?More elephant deaths are occurring this year,? said the divisional forest officer in Wildlife division I. ?We are looking into this. But unless an elephant turns into a rogue it does not charge at human beings without being provoked.? The elephants come down from Bhutan during September-December in search of food. Efforts are on to drive the herd back to the Mahananda sanctuary, he added.

Tusker body found

The decomposed body of a sub-adult male elephant was found in the Buxa Tiger Reserve yesterday, reports our Alipurduar correspondent.

The body had decomposed to such an extent that the organs could not be sent for forensic tests, which means the cause of death will remain a mystery.

Deputy field director of BTR (east) P. Kamalakant, however, has ruled out poaching, as the body did not have any injury marks.

Yesterday at noon, a group of women collecting wood stumbled upon the body in compartment no. 5 of Chhipra forest under South Rydak range of BTR (east). They immediately informed the forest staff who rushed to the spot with the temporary veterinary surgeon of BTR. The body was already infested with maggots.

Kamalakant said the elephant, eight to 12 years old, must have died at least two weeks ago.

?I will conduct an inquiry to find out why the dead body was detected so late,? he said.