A wild tusker killed two youngsters near Gajoldoba in Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri district on Thursday early morning while they were returning home after a kirtan.

The incident triggered protests with local people alleging that the state forest department was not taking adequate steps to prevent elephant attacks.

Officials of the district administration, police and the forest department had to rush to the spot to bring the situation under control. They assured the protesters of steps to stop elephant attacks.

A group of six people from the Takimari Char area of Gajoldoba were returning from a kirtan around 1.30am. While they were passing through the Dadhia-Baluchar area, they heard the sound of crackers and soon met a patrolling team of foresters.

“Realising that elephants had strayed into the area from the neighbouring Baikunthapur forest, the group asked the team members to escort them till the main road. The foresters, however, told them that there was only one elephant and it had been sent back to the jungle,” said a resident of Takimari Char.

Soon after, the group came across a wild tusker. The elephant attacked Tushar Das, 16, and Narayan Das, 19. It wrapped them with the trunk and tossed them on the ground. Both died on the spot, while the four others managed to run away.

Local people asked why the patrolling team had left without escorting the group. With the two deaths, three persons have died in elephant attacks in the Belakoba forest range of the Baikunthapur forest division in the past nine days.

Tushar was a Class IX student of Gajoldoba High School.

The residents stopped a team from the Gajoldoba police outpost from taking away the bodies.

Eventually, a team led by the additional divisional forest officer of Baikunthapur, with the range officer of Belakoba and others, went there and recovered the bodies around 10.30am. The bodies were sent to the Jalpaiguri district hospital for post-mortem.

Later in the day, local Trinamool Congress MLA Khageswar Roy, along with M. Raja, the divisional forest officer of Baikunthapur, an official of Siliguri police commissionerate, and others, held a meeting with the local people at the police outpost.

“The families of the two victims will be paid ₹5 lakh as compensation. We will also form a quick response team (QRT) to intervene in case of elephant depredation. Fences will be erected along a 6km-long stretch to stop elephants from straying into the villages, which are on the fringes of the forest area,” Raja said after the meeting.

On May 14, Rajesh Oraon, a migrant worker, was killed in an elephant attack in another area of the same range. After his death, a section of agitated local people ransacked a vehicle of the forest department. Some forest staff suffered injuries.