Held captive for 6 days, elephant ‘Krishna’ dies

GUWAHATI: A fully-grown wild elephant died at Assam’s Orang National Park on Sunday six days after it was captured with the help of drones and brought to a training facility for domestication after being blamed for killing five people in Goalpara district on October 29, officials said.

Krishna, 25, the elephant, was brought to the facility on November 13 as residents protested against its release in a reserve forest saying it would endanger more human lives, they added.

“The animal had a bad heart which led to a massive cardiac arrest this morning causing its death. The stress that the animal had undergone during its capture and translocation definitely acted as a precipitating cause of its death, not a primary cause,” said KK Sarma, a veterinarian who led the post-mortem.

BV Sandeep, the divisional forest officer, Mangaldai which covers Orang park, said Krishna died at around 5.45 am on Sunday. “The elephant had its normal intake of food and showed normal behaviour.”

Sarma said, usually, younger elephants and not the fully grown ones are trained. He added that Krishna must have been under tremendous physical and mental stress and trauma.

Human-elephant conflict is common in Assam and has left 761 humans and 249 elephants dead since 2010, according to data tabled in state assembly.

According to a study by Indian Institute of Remote Sensing titled Forest Cover Monitoring and Prediction in a Lesser Himalayan Elephant Landscape, published in Current Science in August 2018, Assam’s forest cover is under severe pressure. It revealed that 9,007.14 square kilometres of the forest in parts of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh may face depletion by 2028.

Officials said the state forest department wanted to release Krishna in Lumding Reserve Forest. “The plan had to be abandoned after locals protested,” said Sarma. “When a large wild animal is restrained, there is high chance of it coming into shock and dropping down,” said Kaushik Barua, an expert who was involved in the exercise to capture and translocate it. “Had it been released into the wild, this might not have happened.”