Dhenkanal: Forest officials recovered Sunday the carcass of a tusker from farmland in Ostapal village under Ghatipiri forest section and Sadar police station limits in Dhenkanal district. Forest department officials later calculated the age of the pachyderm as approximately 20 years.
The officials stated that the elephant had turned into a ‘rogue’ and had gotten separated from the herd. It had been destroying crops and properties and had also killed eight people. They said that the animal was electrocuted and arrested a sharecropper Bipin Sahu in this connection.
On being informed, regional chief conservator of forest in Angul, M Jogayanand, divisional forest officer (DFO) Sumit Kar, Sadar forest ranger Bibhudananda Mishra and the members of the joint task force from Bhubaneswar rushed to the spot with veterinarians and launched an investigation into the animal’s death. The veterinarians conducted a post-mortem and sent some bone samples of the carcass for examination at the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) in Bhubaneswar. Later, the carcass was buried.
When contacted, the DFO said that the exact reason behind the animal’s death could be ascertained after the post-mortem report from OUAT.
