Human-elephant conflict claims another life in Chittoor dist

Tirupati: The never-ending human-elephant conflict in Chittoor district has claimed another life when a lone elephant fatally attacked a 70-year-old farmer named, Kanna Naik in Kuppam Assembly constituency on Sunday morning while he was on his way to his field near the forest.

Forest and police officials arrived at the scene and transported Naik's body to a nearby hospital for an autopsy. Sources report that the elephant has been moving between the forests of Tamil Nadu and Kuppam region for the past two weeks. According to District Forest Officer (DFO) C Chaitanya Kumar Reddy, defying the warnings about the movement of two lone elephants, Naik had approached the forest at odd hour. Reddy recalled that he visited PMK Thanda recently and warned the villagers about the elephant movements and asked them not to move alone at night. He announced ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the family of the deceased.

Meanwhile, the residents of villages around the forest expressed frustration with the forest department, citing their failure to prevent elephant attacks despite repeated appeals for which the reasons might be lack of required staff to monitor elephant movements.

Kuppam constituency, which contains largest forest expanse, has seen the return of elephants after a 200-year absence. According to villagers, the forest department seems to be not maintaining any records of elephant movements and providing timely alerts to border villages, which has been resulting in casualties and crop losses.

It was learnt that in this year, so far four elephant deaths were reported due to electrocution besides numerous human casualties.