Elephant tramples man to death in Laldhang forest range of Pauri

A 48-year-old man was trampled to death by an elephant in Laldhang forest range of Pauri district, a forest officer on Thursday said.

Bhopal Singh, a resident of Nathukhal village, had gone for some work last afternoon to Beat No. 7 of Laldhang forest range, a reserved area which is also considered an elephant corridor, Range Officer Virendra Pal Singh said.

When he did not return home in the evening, villagers started searching for him, the officer said.

They informed the forest department after Bhopal’s trampled body was spotted in the reserved forest area late at night, the officer said.

The body was sent for a post-mortem in Kotdwar on Thursday, he said.

A similar incident was recorded in February this year when a 27-year-old man was killed by a wild elephant when he was attempting to film the animal on his mobile phone.

The incident had taken place in the Kaluwala forest area on the outskirts of the state capital. Two men from Aheermandi in the city went on a bike to the jungles and on spotting the pachyderm went very close and started filming it with on their mobile.

The elephant apparently ran amok and killed one of them by throwing him on the ground. The other man had managed to escape.

A forest official said that nearly 100 people have been killed by elephants Uttarakhand after the state carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000. The state reported 1,346 elephants in 2012, which increased to 1,839 in 2017, as per the Synchronisation Population Estimation.

Areas in Dehradun, Haridwar, Lansdowne, and Terai are most prone to elephant attacks.