In Assam jungles, 'Laden' strikes terror

GUWAHATI: " Have they got Laden?" said one man. " Not yet, but the officers are armed and ready," replied another.


Osama bin Laden may have been killed by US Navy SEALs eight years ago, but his name keeps cropping up in parts of Assam. Except that the Laden in question here is not the chief of the dreaded terrorist organization al-Qaeda but a lone wandering elephant that killed five people in a single night in Goalpara district last week.

A team of eight officers is on its tracks - aided by a drone which has already sighted the elephant in Satabari reserve forest- aiming to tranquilize and translocate the pachyderm before it strikes again.

The residents, meanwhile, are forced to live in fear as Assam struggles with a 'jumbo' problem. At least 57 people have been killed in elephant attacks this year alone, according to the forest department. Data submitted in Lok Sabha in July this year by the ministry of environment, forests and climate change also showed that the number of deaths in elephant attacks in Assam far exceeds those from other states with a high elephant population.

While Assam has second-highest number of elephants at 5,719, according to the 2017 elephant population estimation carried out in 23 states, Karnataka has the highest elephant population at 6,049. In Assam, 86 people were killed in elephant attacks in 2018-19, 83 died in 2017-18 and 136 people were killed in 2016-17. In Karnataka, 13 people perished in elephant attacks in 2018-19, 23 in 2017-18 and 38 in 2016-17.

In Goalpara's Matia where five people were killed on October 29 by an elephant, now named Laden, residents find it difficult to sleep peacefully. "We wake up at the slightest sound. We have to be on constant vigil with our torches and firecrackers ready to ward off the animals," said Prafulla Kalita, a school teacher in Goalpara's Matia. The sentiment is echoed by Tirtha Lochan Roy, who works as a bicycle repairer, and whose house was damaged thrice by rampaging elephants between 2016 and 2018.

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. Honorary wildlife warden, Kaushik Baruah, said that 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.

But an important realisation had dawned on people of Sonitpur and elsewhere - the conflict got more attention than it otherwise would have because al-Qaeda chief's name was attached to it. This had made it easier for them to get authorities to act and also to claim compensation in case of damage.

In the following years, every conflict-ridden district had its own Laden. But eliminate one tormentor and another would storm into the scene.