2 pregnant females among 3 elephants killed by train
Three elephants were killed after a speeding train rammed into a heard of elephants in Assam on Monday.
The forest officials said that the incident took place at about 12 midnight when a heard of elephants was crossing over a railway track near Hojai in central Assam. The driver of speeding KanyakumariDibrugarh Vivek Express could not spot the heard of elephant and ran over them.
“One of the elephants was a four-year-old female, while two others were pregnant. One of them aborted a two-month-old foetus after the accident and we found a four-month-old foetus inside the other during the post-mortem,” local forest officer Shafiqur Rahman, who visited the spot soon after the incident, said.
The locals who witnessed the tragic incident alleged that train was moving at very high speed despite the area being known as wild elephant corridor. The wild tuskers frequented in the area in search of food.
The heard of nearly 25 wild elephants from Karbi Anglong district was crossing over the railway track near a railway bridge at Jogijan when incident took place. To protect human habitation from wild elephants, a team of ant-depredation squad was also present in the area, forest officials said adding that it failed to prevent the accident.
The railways however claimed that the place where accident took place was not notified as elephant corridor so there was no speed restriction on trains passing through that section.