This story is from November 3, 2020

Herd of elephants wreaks havoc in Sonbhadra village, kills 10-year-old girl

A herd of around 15 jumbos wreaked havoc in Nemna village under the limits of Bijpur police station area of Sonbhadra district on Sunday late night.
Herd of elephants wreaks havoc in Sonbhadra village, kills 10-year-old girl
VARANASI: A herd of around 15 jumbos wreaked havoc in Nemna village under the limits of Bijpur police station area of Sonbhadra district on Sunday late night.
The jumbos not only damaged houses in the village to eat corn and paddy stocks but also crushed a 10-year-old girl Sunaina to death. Forest officials were trying to send back this herd of elephants to sanctuary area of Chhattisgarh.
This was the second incursion of elephant herds from Chhattisgarh in a fortnight while in November 2019 jumbo herds had stayed for over a month in Sonbhadra.
Talking to TOI on Monday, divisional forest officer Renukoot MP Singh said, “It was a herd of around 15 elephants, which attacked Nemna village in Jarha forest range under Bijpur police station area around midnight. Most unfortunate aspect of this attack of jumbo herd was killing of a minor girl. The body of girl has been handed over to her family after postmortem examination and measures are being initiated to provide financial assistance to her family under natural calamity scheme.”
According to Nemna natives, at around midnight the jumbo herd raided the village after damaging paddy crops in the fields of Sugriv Prasad, Kishun Dev, Arjun Prasad, Siyaram, Radhakrishna, Ramji and Shivprasad. The elephants broke the wall of the house of Jagjivan Ram and started throwing the gunny bags full of corn and paddy. Later, they ate the same corn and paddy.
On becoming aware of the attack of wild elephants, Ram’s family and other villagers started running helter skelter for safe shelter. During the same chaos, Sunaina of Ram’s family was crushed by jumbos, although other family members managed to escape. Villagers alerted Bijpur police after which they reached the village and rushed Sunaina to the nearest hospital, where doctors declared her brought dead. Later, the police sent her body for postmortem.

Apart from police the team of forest officials and staff led by ranger Mohd Zaheer Mirza camped the area. Mirza said that team of his department was monitoring the area in view of the possibility of jumbos attack but the herd managed to enter the village by taking advantage of dense forest and dark they. The operation to drive the elephants away into the sanctuary area of Chhattisgarh could be started on Monday morning.
Singh said that till 2018, the jumbo herds incursion was noticed rarely in Sonbhadra but in November 2019 a herd of elephants had stayed for over a month. About a fortnight back a herd of elephants had entered from Chhattigarh but it was sent back, he said.
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