Agencies/Mysore


An elephant, with a tranquliser dart in its side, brushes past a car as it walks along a street in Mysore yesterday.  It was one of two wild elephants which trampled one person to death in a three-hour rampage in the southern city, causing widespread panic
Two wild elephants trampled one person to death in a three-hour rampage in the southern city of Mysore early yesterday, causing widespread panic, officials said.
Karnataka’s Higher Education Minister S A Ramdas said the jumbos entered the city from a nearby forest at about 6am and “wreaked havoc in a suburb by trampling one person to death and caused panic across the city.”
The victim was a 55-year-old man who had come out of his house in the Bamboo Bazaar area of Mysore on hearing a commotion. He was trampled to death and died instantly, Ramdas said.
The victim was identified as Renuka Prasad.
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa announced a compensation of Rs500,000 to Prasad’s family.
One elephant barged into a women’s college compound and roamed menacingly in the grounds, while the other got into a residential area.
Ramdas said schools and colleges have been closed for the day and extra police deployed as a precaution, even though forest rangers and officials from Mysore zoo managed to capture the animals and tranquilise them.
State forest department officials said the young jumbos came from a forest about 35km away with two others, who remain at large on the outskirts of the city, which is 140km from the tech hub of Bangalore.
One official blamed the rampage on encroachment of human settlements into forested areas that are the elephants’ natural habitat.
“Unregulated expansion of farm lands and increasing movement of people and transport vehicle through the elephant corridor are making the wild jumbos enter into villages and towns in search of food and shelter,” he said.
The two captured elephants were released back into the wild later in the day, Ramdas said.
India has a population of 25,000 to 20,000 wild elephants. An elephant task force set up by the federal government recommended in 2010 that wild elephants be given protection similar to that of tigers.