Truck mows down and kills three wild tuskers at Andhra Pradesh's Palamaner

TIRUPATI: Three wild tuskers which were part of a pachyderms group were mowed down and killed by a speeding truck near Palamaner in Chittoor district late on Wednesday.
According to Chittoor DFO C Chaitanya Kumar Reddy, a herd of wild tuskers were crossing over the national highway near Jagamarla cross near Palamaner on Wednesday night.
A truck heading to Chennai from Palamaner with a vegetables load, rammed into the wild elephants crossing the road, leaving three of them dead on the spot.
According to the Chittoor DFO, one dead tusker was aged 5-10 years, while the other two tuskers were aged about 10-15 years.
While the front portion of the truck got severely damaged, the truck driver who was in an inebriated state abandoned the vehicle and absconded away from the spot.
Traffic along the Bengaluru-Tirupati-Chennai route came to a standstill following the accident on Wednesday night.
Local police and the forest department officials who learnt about the road mishap, rushed to the spot and made arrangements to shift the dead tuskers to the forest area and cleared the traffic.
Forest department staff performed postmortem on the three tuskers and later buried them inside the Koundinya reserve forests.
Chittoor DFO confirmed to reporters that the driver responsible for the deaths of the three tuskers was taken into custody and all relevant sections were booked against him.
The forest department has also seized the vehicle responsible for the mishap.
With wild tuskers frequently criss-crossing the Bhuthalavanda and Jagamarla cross near Palamaner ghat section, the forest department will hold consultations with the NHAI authorities to propose the construction of an underpass for the free movement of the tuskers in order to prevent such mishaps and deaths of the wild elephants in the future.