Elephant creates ruckus in Mahakumbh camp area

THE WILD ELEPHANT WAS SEEN STROLLING IN LALJIWALAVALA TAPU AREA, JUST WITHIN A KILOMETRE OF HAR-KI-PAURI

HARIDWAR: Panic gripped people and security personal when a wild elephant entered the Mahakumbh camp area and created ruckus in Haridwar on Saturday.

At the Laljiwalavala Tapu area, just within a kilometre of Har-Ki-Pauri, the wild elephant was seen strolling in the area just adjacent to the Ganga river.

The area has been temporarily converted into Kumbh camp colony for the home guards deployed on Mahakumbh duty.

The security personnel sitting inside the tents came out and ran towards the safer areas while local people, pilgrims and Kumbh visitors also ran towards the highway stretch where passers-by and vehicles stopped to see the elephant creating ruckus in Kumbh camps.

A forest team from Rajaji Tiger Reserve and Kumbh Mela Force personnel rushed to the Laljiwala camp area. They had a tough time controlling and shooing away the wild elephant.

“As soon as we got the information about a wild elephant entering the Kumbh camp area, we arrived with trained forest personnel. The first thing we did was to ensure the area gets cordoned off and people present there are safely moved away. After much resistance, forest personnel succeeded in making the elephant retreat to the nearby forest terrain,” said forest ranger DP Naudiyal.

He further added that local villagers and volunteers are being trained ahead of Kumbh in ensuring safety from wild animals with round-the-clock forest teams on alert monitoring the wild animals movement in and around the residential habitats on the outskirts of forest terrain.

Experts pointed that the elephant had intruded into the Kumbh camp area from the nearby Chila forest range falling in Pauri Garhwal district of Rajaji Tiger Reserve.