Rogue Pet Elephant Seized By Police After It Trampled A 14-Year-Old Boy Dead

A rogue female elephant and her calf owned by a former Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) have reportedly been seized by the Assam police on Thursday, July 15, after the mammoth mother trampled and killed a 14-year-old boy in Golaghat, Assam, India, local authorities confirmed.

The horrific accident happened in the Bokakhat area of Golaghat district, Assam on July 8. The elephant named Dulumoni owned by Jiten Gogoi, a two-time former MLA from Bokakhat, allegedly trampled and killed a 14-year-old boy after he tried to hug the elephant, India Today reported.

Following outrage from the general public, the police registered a case under Section 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code.

The rogue elephant and her calf were later taken into custody by the police and handed over to the authorities of the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve.

“We lodged a case under Section 304 of Indian Penal Code for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. We seized the elephant and her calf in connection with the case and have handed them over to the forest department for custody,” a Bokakhat police station official told the media.

The recent incident was reportedly the third time the said elephant had attacked a human, according to Hindustan Times.

“The forest department is not involved in the investigation of the case. Since the police had no means of keeping the elephant and its calf, they placed them under our custody,” Ramesh Gogoi, Divisional Forest Officer of Kaziranga said.

Domestic animals can be seized by the police or forest department as part of an investigation of a case, according to P Sivakumar, Director of Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNPTR).

Similarly, the forest department in Kerala reportedly arrested a male domestic elephant called Thechikottukavu Ramachandran in 2013 after it went rogue and killed three women during a temple festival at Perumbavoor. The elephant’s owners reportedly had to submit a bond amounting to US$40,251 (30,00,000 Indian rupees) to release the elephant.

In a similar but unrelated incident, forest officials in Assam seized a railway locomotive for reportedly mowing down a female elephant and her calf in October last year. On the night of Sept. 26 and Sept. 27 last year, a speeding goods train also reportedly crashed onto the elephants near Pathorkhola railway station as the elephants were trying to cross the railway tracks, the Times of India reported.

According to a report presented by forest minister Parimal Suklabaidya in the state assembly recently, 812 people have died due to human-elephant conflict in the last decade in Assam.