- Guwahati (IANS) - Frequent trumpeting and shrill cries
echoed until midnight Thursday as a herd of wild Asiatic elephants trooped
together to mourn seven pachyderms mowed down by a speeding train in Assam.
"It was a sight to be seen than told. About a hundred elephants were
circling the seven pachyderms that lay dead near the railway tracks, with
tears rolling down the eyes of the herd," said Khagen Sangmai, a top
official of the Digboi police station in eastern Assam.
"The herd was almost traumatised by the deaths with frequent trumpeting
and the whole sight was indeed emotional," Sangmai told IANS by telephone.
A speeding inter-city passenger train was derailed Thursday evening near
Bogapani, close to the oil township of Digboi, about 550 km east of Guwahati,
Assam's principal city, with the engine ramming against a small herd squatting
on the tracks.
Six elephants, two adults and four calves, were sliced into pieces almost
instantly, while another calf succumbed to injuries later in the night.
The train bound for Dibrugarh from Ledo in eastern Assam was carrying some
200 passengers in five coaches.
Sangmai, accompanied by a police patrol, was among the first to arrive
at the accident site Thursday night.
"No sooner the accident took place than a herd of about 100 elephants
came from nowhere and were behaving like human beings mourning the deaths
of dear ones," said Rantu Das, another police official.
"The way they were crying over the deaths, it brought tears to the
eyes of the policemen and villagers."
Police and forest guards took at least six hours to chase the mourning
herd of elephants before clearing the tracks and lifting the derailed train
engine with cranes.
"We feel the herd is somewhere near the accident site and may come
again to mourn," said Das.
Last year, five elephants were killed when a train ran over a herd in eastern
Assam's Karbi Anglong district.
Experts say wild elephants have been moving out of the jungles with people
encroaching upon animal corridors.
There are an estimated 5,500 wild elephants in Assam out of India's total
pachyderm population of 10,000.
Copyright © 2001 IANS India Private Limited. All rights Reserved.
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