A female elephant, aged about eight years, was found dead at Rajanagar under the Athagarh Forest Range on Wednesday morning.
Locals intimated forest officials about the dead pachyderm, which was lying in a brinjal field near their village. Forest officials along with ACF Rajendra Kumar Das and Range Officer Rabindra Nayak reached the spot.A team of veterinary surgeons from the OUAT led by Prof Niranjan Sahoo also rushed the spot and conducted postmortem of the elephant’s carcass. Local Block Veterinary Officer Susant Kumar Behera assisted the team.
During the postmortem, it was found that the tongue of the pachyderm was chafed and its lower jaws were broken.
There was severe bleeding as at least two buckets of blood came out of its mouth.
The doctors’ team apprehend that some incident like blasting had happened, due to which the animal’s mouth was totally damaged.It was suspected that the poachers had kept bombs for poaching the wild boars in this Sukasan Reserve Forest and regular poaching happen here with the knowledge of forest officials who allegedly in turn take bribe.
It is alleged that due to poor guarding of the forest, wild animal poachers have been active in this jungle, where at least five elephants have died in the last five months.
Environmentalists and wild animal lovers are deeply concerned over the matter and demand the concerned authorities to take stringent actions against the poachers and unscrupulous forest officials involved in the poaching and destroying the forest.
