Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): Three persons including a child of a family were killed as a group of wild elephants went rampage in Anuppur district late Wednesday night.
The incident took place at Belgaon village in Bijuri Forest circle of the district. The deceased have been identified as Gaya Prasad Kevat, his wife Munni Kevat and a four-year-old grandson.
According to information, the villagers were sleeping when a group of wild elephants attacked the village and damaged many houses. The group of elephants reached the outskirts of the village, where the Kevat family were living in a makeshift house on their farmland.
The elephants damaged their makeshift house and also killed the couple and their grandson.
The villages alleged that they had informed the forest officials about the movement of wild elephants in the forest, but they didn’t take any action.
“Some villagers spotted wild elephants in the forest and informed forest about movement, but they just issued a warning in the village, instead taking any action,” said a villager.
Local MLA, Sunil Saraf, who reached the village on Thursday morning, said that the forest department should have relocated the villagers who were living near forest or at their farmlands. “If forest officials had information about elephant movement, they must have shifted villagers from forest areas to other places,” he said.
Though the Divisional Forest Officer could not be contacted for comment, a forest officer said that a wild elephants' group had migrated from Kelhari Forest range in Chhattisgarh, recently. “Wild elephants often move from Chhattisgarh forest to Madhya Pradesh forest. We had issued a warning to villagers and asked them not to go to areas near the forest, but they listened,” said the officer, on condition of anonymity.
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