Assam: 'Laden' calms down but capture plan still on

GUWAHATI: ' Laden ', the lone wandering elephant that killed five persons in Assam 's Goalpara district in a state of 'musth' last week, has started calming down. However, the forest department is not taking any chances and is going ahead with its plan to capture the pachyderm on Monday.

Six trained elephants have already reached the Satabari Reserve Forest where the elephant was last spotted by a drone.

Forest officials said 'Laden' is still on the move within the forest patches in and around Satabari. Sootea MLA Padma Hazarika has lent his trained elephant to help caprure the "rogue" jumbo.

"We cannot take any chance when five people have already died. There is no guarantee that the elephant will not turn aggressive again. So, its better to translocate the pachyderm to a location where there are no human settlements nearby," Kaushik Baruah, one of the members of the forest department team constituted to capture the elephant.

'Exercise to capture rogue elephant will start from Mon'

Sailendra Pandey, PRO to forest minister Parimal Suklabaidya, added, "Hopefully, the exercise to capture the elephant should start from Monday. All preparations are being made with necessary logistics."

Such is the terror that elephants have wreaked in Assamese villages that the moniker 'Laden' has attached itself to jumbos that stealthily sneak into farms to raid crops and attack farmers. Baruah said the name came into use when an elephant killed a dozen people in several villages across Sonitpur district in 2006, a time when Osama Bin Laden was frequently in the news. The elephant was shot down later that year and his human namesake in 2011.

Wildlife experts said elephants don't attack unless their habitats are threatened or they are in a state of musth (when an elephant displays aggressive behaviour due to surge in testosterone levels).

Meanwhile, people's anger against the department is growing as the elephant has not yet been captured yet. "We are so terrorized that we wake up in the middle of the night to see if the elephant has entered our village again. Also, there is a rumour that an elephant herd is on the move. This makes our life difficult. We have to be ready with our torches and crackers in case the elephants sneak into our village at night," said Prafulla Kalita, a school teacher in Goalpara's Matia. One of the five victims killed by 'Laden' on the night of October 29 lived barely 2 km from Kalita's residence. The casualties occurred at Bataitari, Santipurnigam, Paschim Matia, Hidhabari and Hahsorabri villages of Goalpara that share border with Meghalaya's Garo Hills.