Elephant found dead at paddy field in Chhattisgarh

Raigarh: An elephant was found dead in a village in Chhattisgarh's Raigarh district, a forest official said today. The tusker, aged around 22, was found dead at a paddy field in Badgaon village under Junwani circle of Raigarh forest range, Division Forest Officer (Raigarh division) Vijaya Kurre said. A team of forest officials rushed to the spot after some villagers informed them about the dead elephant and sent the carcass for postmortem, she said.

The exact cause of the pachyderm's death is yet to be ascertained, the DFO said, adding that no injury mark was found on the carcass during preliminary examination. The forest officials did not find any electric wires, generally put up by local farmers around their croplands to prevent wild elephants from destroying their crops, at the spot, she said.

This is the third incident of elephant death since August 2016 in Raigarh district, sources said. In the past few years, there have been a number of human-elephant conflicts in the thick forested northern Chhattisgarh, comprising Surguja, Korba, Surajpur, Raigarh, Jashpur and Korea districts. The region has witnessed several killings of tribals as well as elephants and widespread damage to houses and crops by rogue pachyderms in past years.