An amateur photographer paid with his life for getting too close to a wild elephant among a herd that had strayed into a eucalyptus grove in Mantapa village near Bannerghatta on Friday.
An employee of global IT major IBM in Electronics City here, Jamburu Surappa Ramesh (39), rushed to the village with his camera as soon as he heard about the herd of wild elephants.
By the time Mr. Ramesh reached the spot, over a thousand villagers as well as police and forest officials had gathered.
“Just as we were trying to get people to stay behind the perimeter, one man (Mr. Ramesh) broke the cordon and approached the elephants with his camera,” said a forest official. He was too slow to react to a charge by one of the elephants and was trampled.
The crowd intervened and their howling and screaming made the animal retreat. But it was too late, said Police Circle Inspector H.S. Venkatesh.