Dudhwa tusker Mohan kills mahout

Shahjahanpur: In a tragic incident, an elephant trampled his mahout to death in Dudhwa National Park on Thursday night. This is the second person that the 35-year-old elephant, Mohan, has killed in five months. At the time of the incident, no other person was in the vicinity. The body was found on Friday morning. The elephant has now been kept under observation, and forest staff have been advised to keep away from the animal.

Piecing together the evidence, forest officials believe that the incident happened when mahout Ranjeet Kumar (37) went inside the enclosure to apply medicine on another elephant, Sundar, on Thursday night. For some reason, he must have approached Mohan, which was in another part of the enclosure. Another elephant, called Gajraj, was near Mohan. It was raining heavily and Mohan may have become nervous, possibly due to the thunder and lightning, and attacked the mahout.
Dudhwa’s field director Sunil Choudhary is investigating the latest incident and monitoring the elephants. Mohan is being kept under isolation.

In February, Mohan had killed a caretaker who used to feed it. Foresters are not ruling out the possibility of Gajraj attacking the mahout. This elephant is known to be difficult to handle. It was recently sent to Pilibhit for a tiger search operation but was sent back after it attacked an official.
Veterinarian Brijendra Yadav, who works in Lucknow zoo, told TOI, “The elephant may have been in a ‘musth’ state and this could be a reason that it became aggressive and attacked the mahout.” Male elephants turn ‘musth’ from time to time and become highly aggressive. Mostly domestic elephants are kept isolated when they are in a ‘musth’ state because they can attack their keeper at this time. Such a practice is also followed in zoos.”

Choudhary said, “Ranjeet was our best mahout.” He recalled an incident of 2010 in Meerut where an elephant, Shera, created a ruckus during the wedding of then BSP MP Kadir Rana’s son with party’s Rajya Sabha MP Munquad Ali's daughter. Ranjeet had controlled this rogue elephant then. “We have lost a valuable asset and all of us are very upset. We believe that Mohan killed Ranjeet, but there is a probability that Gajraj might have attacked him because both these elephants were in the open enclosure. I am investigating this incident myself.”

According to Dudhwa officials, Ranjeet was deeply attached to all the elephants. He had gone to apply medicine on Sundar and did not return after that. Other staff members went looking for him but returned due to heavy rain. They noticed that Mohan was in an aggressive mood. The search began on Friday morning and Ranjeet’s body was found near the spot where Mohan was.

Choudhary inspected the spot along with deputy director Mahaveer Kaujalgi and a WWF team.
Kaujalgi told TOI, "Ranjeet was taking care of Mohan for the past seven months but he was mainly responsible for Sundar because it was skilled and had a very good bonding with all other elephants.”
Ranjeet’s family was given a compensation of Rs 10,000 by the WWF team. The family has been assured of some compensation by the government as well.

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