Rogue Elephant Returns To Stomp On Woman's Corpse At Her Funeral After Trampling Victim To Death

An elderly woman in Eastern India was killed on Thursday after a rogue, hostile elephant suddenly attacked her while she was doing chores and trampled her to death, before showing up at her funeral, later on, to stomp on her body again.

The woman, who was later identified by local authorities as Maya Murmu, was at a tube well in Mayurbhanj district’s Raipal village when the incident first occurred. The elephant, whose connection to the woman remains unknown, reportedly came to the well and trampled the woman, according to the Independent.

The elephant was said to be an escapee of the nearby Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary. The animal trampled on the woman and left, and Murmu was sent to a nearby hospital where she later died from her injuries, News Australia reported.

While the family of Maya Murmu was gathered together to perform funeral rites for her body, the elephant appeared again out of nowhere and took Murmu’s body out of the funeral pyre before stomping on it again as shocked onlookers watched. The elephant then threw the body into the air before leaving the ceremony.

The family was able to continue the rest of the funeral rites for Murmu after the elephant left.

Human-elephant conflicts are said to be a normal thing in the area due to the industrial activity in the area, which contributes to things like the unnatural death rates of elephants in the area. More than 1,300 elephants have reportedly died in the area since 2000-2001, with 42 elephants recorded to have been killed in April-October of 2021.

This has not been the only human-elephant killing recorded this year: in March, a woman was killed and her son injured in a wild elephant attack in central Chhattisgarh state’s Bilaspur district, while a woman was trampled on in May outside her house in southern Tamil Nadu.