Kalpana in front of her house and (below) her father Gobindo at the health centre. Pictures by Anirban Choudhury

Alipurduar, Feb. 1: A wild elephant lifted up a five-year-old girl by the trunk, brought her outside the hut and for almost half-an-hour held the screaming child in between its fore legs as her father watched helplessly from a distance.

The girl was unhurt, but there were no witnesses to narrate how the elephant let her go since Gobinda Das had, by then, fallen down unconscious. The father had been hit by a stone hurled at him by the elephant.

“I could do little. It was dark and the animal was huge. It stood there with my child between its front legs for half-an-hour. At first I was too scared to move. When I mustered up courage and ran towards it, it flung a stone at me. I don’t know what happened after that. When I regained my senses, my daughter Kalpana was sitting beside me, too shocked to speak,” said Das from his hospital bed today.

Elephant expert Parbati Barua told The Telegraph over the phone that the animals generally liked children and rarely caused them harm. “In this case, if the tusker had brought the girl outside on its trunk, it means the elephant did it unknowingly. Since it was dark, the animal probably could not make out the girl.”

A retired forest officer said “the place in between the elephant’s leg was the safest”.

“It means she was in safe custody. The elephant did not want to part with her or let any harm come to her. That is why the tusker hit the father when he tried to rescue the child,” the former officer said.

Das is a farmer and stays at Tripura Basti, 27km from Alipurduar town. On Friday, he was preparing to settle down for the night after putting his daughter to bed when the elephant attacked his hut, the walls of which are made of bamboo. The farmer’s wife had gone to her brother’s house next door for last minute preparations for Saraswati Puja the following day.

The villagers had heard the elephant trumpeting around 11pm. “Even I heard it. But I did not realise that it was at my house till my daughter started screaming. I tried to run out but my brother stopped me. The villagers had by then lighted torches and were bursting crackers to drive the elephant back to the Panbari forest from where it had come,” said Basanti, Das’s wife.

But the villagers were scared. “Das’s house is blocked by another hut in the front. The little that we gathered before the farmer became senseless was that the girl was in between the elephant’s legs. We were scared that our chase may prompt it to trample the child. Besides, we had to leave an escape route open for the elephant and could not afford to block it,” said Swapan Das, a villager.

The tusker left a little after half-an-hour. It had ripped out the bamboo walls of the hut and strewn all household items across the courtyard.

“I entered in dread and saw my husband lying on the floor. Kalpana sat there with a dazed look. Till today, she hasn’t even told us, how it all happened or how she was let go,” said Basanti.

The villagers took Das to the Samuktala health centre. He was bleeding from his forehead. “I never thought that I would get back my only daughter alive,” said Das today.

Barua cited several incidents in Assam where elephants had left the babies alone. “Many women in Assam go to the forests to collect firewood. They often take their children along, keeping them under the trees while going about their work. There were instances when the wild elephants came near the babies, but did not harm them.”