Elephant tramples man to death who tried taking its photograph in Bengal

An elephant trampled to death a man who tried to take its photograph in Lataguri forest area in Bengal on Thursday afternoon, highlighting a harrowing instance of man-animal conflict.

The incident took place around 3.30pm in Lataguri forest area on National Highway 31 near the New Jalpaiguri-Alipurduar railway track, which is an elephant corridor.

As traffic stopped to allow the elephant to cross, Siddiqulla Rahaman, a 42-day-old security guard at a cooperative bank, got down from his vehicle and walked up to the animal to take its picture.

“It seemed Rahaman was inviting the tusker towards him. The elephant moved very slowly and he had time to run away,” said Ujjwal Ghosh the chief conservator of forest (wild life)-North, told Hindustan Times.

The police are awaiting a post-mortem report, said an officer in Jalpaiguri.

Another instance of man-animal conflict was witnessed in 2000, when a tiger killed a youth who entered an open-air enclosure by scaling the walls in Alipore Zoo of Kolkata.

In January 1996, a tiger killed a man, who entered its the enclosure at the same zoo.

The tusker population and man-elephant conflicts are on the rise in North Bengal. Though the preliminary report of the elephant census carried out till March this year was 480, foresters believe the figure would cross 550. The census figure is expected to be released early next year.

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