KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, Feb 15: A quick response team (QRT) member was killed on being attacked by a tusker in a jungle under the Baharagora Thana area in the wee hours on Thursday.
Identified as Bablu Baske (47), the victim was a resident of Dubukhana village in the Bankuda district of West Bengal.
The incident took place at a forest stretch along Lodhanbani village in Sendra panchayat in Baharagora block close to the Bengal border past midnight.
Attacked while searching for elephants
According to sources, residents of Lodhanbani village had informed the police about the presence of wild elephants near their village. Responding to the SOS, the police informed the concerned forest ranger Digvijay Singh who pressed a 15-member QRT at the jungle in question.
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The sources said as the QRT, inclusive of Bablu Baske was searching for the elephants carrying ‘mashals’ and crackers, suddenly a huge tusker appeared on the scene and attacked the QRT, causing one of them to be trampled.
The killer tusker had subsequently fled the scene. The remaining members of the QRT soon rescued the critically injured to Baharagora Community Health Center where the doctor declared him as brought dead.
Forest dept assures victim’s family for compensation
In the morning the police seized the body and sent it to the Ghatsila sub-divisional hospital for postmortem.
A team of forest department team visited the place of occurrence and later contacted the victim’s family. The forest department officials also assured the bereaved family that they would soon start the process for making payment of the compensation amount soon.
Significantly, the killer elephant had appeared from the jungle on Thursday afternoon again, triggering fear among the villagers who are demanding the forest department to drive it away from the region.
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