The loudspeaker warnings went out when the herd walked into Gondwar on Thursday, February 12. By early Friday, six villagers were dead.
Gondwar is a village in Jharkhand’s Hazaribag district, in eastern India. Vikas Kumar Ujjwal, a forest officer with the state’s Department of Forest, Environment and Climate Change, confirmed the toll to the Hindustan Times and Press Trust of India. The victims were trampled as they ran from the elephants in the early hours of February 13.
“We had alerted villagers through the public address system as the herd entered the block,” Ujjwal said, per the Hindustan Times. “Unfortunately, when people tried to flee from their homes, six of them were trampled to death.”
A family and two small children
Four of the dead belonged to one family. Two of them were small children, a 1-year-old and a 3-month-old, according to The New Indian Express. Poonam Devi, a relative, told the Hindustan Times that the two children had been left alone when the elephants arrived. Another child was seriously injured and is in a hospital in Hazaribag, Ujjwal told PTI and the Hindustan Times.
A herd on the move
This was not the herd’s first attack. Over the previous few days it had attacked several people, PTI and the Hindustan Times reported. The animals had been moving through the Ramgarh and Hazaribag districts, and Ujjwal said they had caused casualties in Bokaro.
The forest department has asked higher authorities for permission to tranquilize the herd. Until that comes through, staff are watching it. “The herd is quite aggressive and has been moving very fast; it has become difficult for the forest staff to monitor it,” Ujjwal told The New Indian Express. A special team will now keep watch round the clock, he said, and experts have been called in from Bankura to help steer the animals away from residential areas.
