Chaibasa, Nov 4 An adult female wild elephant was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district, a forest official said on Wednesday.
Chaibasa Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Aditya Narayan said that the carcass of the elephant was discovered by villagers on Wednesday morning.
“Following information from the villagers, a forest department team from the Noamundi range arrived at the scene, accompanied by a JCB (earth excavator) machine. A five-member team from the Nalda section (Odisha) also visited the site at noon to investigate; they questioned the villagers before leaving,” the forest official said.
The DFO said that according to the villagers, the carcass was found in a field belonging to ‘Man Chudiya Burma,’ situated near the Landub Gena forest, close to an iron ore mine.
Villagers claimed that a herd comprising 20 wild elephants had been camping in the forest and had damaged paddy crops of farmers.
“There are no external injury marks on the wild elephant. However, a team of local vets will be doing the post-mortem to ascertain the cause of death,” the DFO added.
A wild baby elephant had drowned after slipping into an unfinished irrigation well in Sindri Gauri at Noamundi earlier this week and was buried in a paddy field in the village.
(PTI News)
