Officials search for single-tusked elephant after 22 killed in Jharkhand

Forest officials are searching for a single-tusked elephant after it killed more than 20 people in West Singhbhum district of the eastern state of Jharkhand. Since the beginning of January, 22 people have been killed by the animal as it moved through forests and small villages, according to officials.

Attacks have mainly taken place at night; the first victim was a 35-year-old man in Bandijhari village on 1 January. Those trampled to death or fatally injured have included a couple and their two young children and a forest department official. The Chaibasa district has been put on high alert and residents were warned to stay away from forest areas and not to go out at night.

Aditya Narayan, divisional forest officer of Chaibasa district, said they believed a young male elephant had separated from his herd and become "extremely violent" and that three attempts to tranquillise it had failed. He said efforts to tranquillise it would be resumed, and more than 100 forest department personnel plus wildlife specialists from three other states have been drafted into the search.

Officials say the elephant has been covering almost 30km a day and that its volatility and erratic trajectory have made monitoring difficult. The rampage comes amid rising human-elephant conflict in India, attributed to deforestation, food and water scarcity and residential encroachment into former elephant corridors; roughly 10% of areas that used to be corridors no longer exist.

Key Topics

World, Single-tusked Elephant, West Singhbhum, Chaibasa, Bandijhari, Forest Department