In a single largest casualty ever in India , seven elephants including a four year old calf died when a Guwahati bound goods train passing through dense forest in dooars knocked them down around 11 P.M. on the night of 23nd September’2010 while a heard of elephants was crossing the railway tracks.
Four of the elephants died on spot including one female that was dragged along for 300 meters by the train, causing some damage to the track itself. The baby elephant was found alive in the morning and was outwardly without any wound; but it slumped to the ground and died within one hour.
Sumita Ghatak, the Divisional Forest Officer of Wildlife-II, said that the high casualty indicated that the goods train must has been passing at very high speed (than stipulated in the elephant corridor) and consequently an FIR was lodged against the driver of the train. The train incidentally stopped some distance after the driver realized the tragedy. Ghatak and the divisional forest office Kalyan Das of
The large number of deaths sparked of a spontaneous and wide spread protects among the local residents and nature groups squatted on the tracks in protest throwing the railway services on the Bengal-Assam trunk root out of gear for several hours and the blockade was lifted only after arrival of Additional divisional Railway Manager, Indrajit Singh after he assured the nature group to take suitable action to avoid such incidents in future.
The Divisional Railway Manager of Alipurduar, Mr. S.N.Singh has admitted that the train was speeding at 70Kmph and the driver may not have blown whistle to keep away the elephants from approaching the tracks.
A quick look through the casualties suffered by elephants in India through two decades between 1887 and 2007 show that a total of 114 elephants died on railways tracks in different parts of the country, Assam scoring the highest figure of 39 casualties followed by West Bengal at 24, Uttarakhand at 24 and Jharkhand at 15 casualties.
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