Forest officials further said the elephants belonged to a herd that had been wandering in the area for the last couple of days.
Two wild elephants, one of them 20 months pregnant, were found dead in as many days in Surajpur district of Chhattisgarh.
While forest officials managed to conduct a postmortem on the elephant found dead on Tuesday, the body of the other couldn’t be retrieved as of late Wednesday as it was surrounded by a herd.
According to forest officials, the carcasses were found at separate places in Ganeshpur area of Pratappur forest range, about 400 km from Raipur. “While the pregnant elephant died because of a liver ailment in the early hours of Tuesday, the carcass of another female pachyderm was yet to be recovered as a herd is surrounding it,” a district forest official said.
Chief Conservator of Forests (wildlife) Arun Kumar Pandey confirmed the deaths.
Meanwhile, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Surajpur division, J R Bhagat said a preliminary postmortem of the pregnant elephant revealed it had a cyst in its liver and some issues in the spleen that might have led to its death.
Forest officials further said the elephants belonged to a herd that had been wandering in the area for the last couple of days.
In the past few years, several incidents of human-elephant conflict were reported from the forests of northern Chhattisgarh, comprising Surguja, Korba, Surajpur, Raigarh, Jashpur, Korba and Koriya districts.