By IANS,
Raipur : A 70-year-old man in Chhattisgarh was trampled to death by a rampaging wild elephant after he ignored the appeals of villagers and tried to touch the animal’s feet to seek its blessings, forest officials said Thursday.
The incident took place late Wednesday in the forested village of Balpur, about 150 km from here.
“The wild elephant probably sneaked into the village from neighbouring Orissa and created terror in the Sarsiwa forested area, which includes Balpur. People ran into their houses to avoid the rampaging jumbo but Bhakla Satnami went near it,” Anil Soni, divisional forest officer, Raipur, told IANS.
“Satnami tried to touch the animal’s feet to seek its blessings and was trampled to death.”
The forest department sent a team to Sarsiwa Thursday to chase away the jumbo from residential pockets.
This is perhaps the first casualty in a jumbo attack in Raipur district though vast areas in the state’s north, comprising Surguja, Jashpur, Koria, Raigarh and Korba districts, have seen many dozens of people fall victim to the man-animal conflict over the last decade.