A 64-year-old man is believed to have been killed by a wild elephant at Gandhi Nagar in the O-Valley Forest Range in Gudalur. The man’s body was discovered three days after he was killed on Thursday.
Forest department officials identified the deceased as A. Palaniyandi, an area resident, who had been working in a major tea estate in the area. Forest department officials said that he was living alone in Gudalur and had ventured through the estate around three days ago, when he was attacked and killed by a wild elephant.
Local residents only found the body after they went to look for the deceased on Thursday morning, and informed the forest department. The body was retrieved and sent for postmortem. During postmortem, it was found that the man had suffered injuries consistent with an elephant attack.
Officials said that Palaniyandi was survived by his daughter and that interim compensation amounting to ₹ 50,000 would be given to his next of kin.
This is the second reported death of an individual in Gudalur forest division this year. Due to intensive monitoring of wild elephants on a 24x7 basis by field staff in the division, the number of deaths caused by problematic human-elephant interactions has significantly reduced over the last two years.
