Seven elephants were killed after a New-Delhi bound Rajdhani Express rammed into a herd during the wee hours of December 20 morning. The engine, along with four coaches of the superfast express, were derailed even as no injuries to the passengers were reported. A grievously injured pregnant elephant delivered a male calf after the hit, while four sub-adults of the same herd and two other females perished in the collision. The male calf remains in a critical condition at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation in Kaziranga.
According to officials at North Frontier Railway, a division of Indian Railways, around 100 elephants were attempting to cross the railway track when the incident occurred, even as locals alleged that the accident was a case of negligence as seen in the earlier instances of elephant deaths in the area. The incident has raised a question mark yet again on mitigation efforts aimed to prevent elephant deaths on railway tracks in Assam.
Sinu Moni Deuri, a 35-year-old farmer was up all night with her family at Sangraijurai, a village in the Kampur sub-division of Nagaon district in central Assam. The local village panchayat had alerted her by 10:30 PM through an SMS about a herd of 150 elephants roaming around in the area. With her house barely situated a hundred metres away from the railway, she was one of the eyewitnesses of this horrifying tragedy.
“Towards the beginning of the paddy harvest season, elephants come to our villages. They do not do a lot of damage but we have to keep an eye to prevent them from entering our farms. So, I lit two fires in our courtyard,” Deuri said, recounting the incident.
“At around 2 AM, they started moving closer to railway tracks. Some people were trying to chase the elephants from their fields. The elephants started to move towards the railway tracks. We were worried that the Rajdhani might cross at any moment, praying for a safe passage for the elephants. However, around 2:15 AM, there was a loud bang. We saw sparks and heard the cries of the injured elephants. The train was off the rails,” Deuri narrated.
According to Forest Ranger, Shemim Akhtar, there were 150 elephants roaming around in the area for a few days. “We had forest guards patrolling the Kothiatoli area, around two kilometres from the present incident site, where the elephants cross the railway tracks and National Highway 27. This was an unusual spot for the elephants to cross,” Akhtar told Down To Earth (DTE). The ranger, however, added that a similar incident had happened on December 17, 2016, in which four elephants, including a calf, were mowed down by a speeding train.
On the other hand, Public Relations Officer of North Frontier Railway, Kapinjal Sarma, said the incident took place at a location which is not a designated elephant corridor. “The loco pilot on observing the herd of elephants applied emergency brakes. However, elephants dashed with the train,” Sarma stated in a press release. Locals, however, point to a pattern of elephant hits by speeding trains, which seems to be increasing every season.
