A wild tusker, locally known as Padayappa, disrupted traffic on the Munnar-Udumalpet Highway on Tuesday morning after camping near the Chatta-Munnar check post on the stretch for around an hour since 6 a.m.
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On noticing the tusker, the vehicles parked on the sides of the road. The tusker then tried to move towards the vehicles following which the Forest department officials and local natives chased the animal from the area.
Local natives said that for the past month, Padayappa has been camping on the Munnar-Marayoor stretch. On Monday night, the tusker camped near the layams (cluster homes) of the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP) at Chatta-Munnar and tried to raid homes and pluck jack fruit from the premises.
In the second week of July, tusker Padayappa attacked cluster homes at Pampanmala, near Marayur. It tried to raid the homes for food, destroyed the door of a house owned by Rajendran, and ate a sackful of rice. Later, local people chased the tusker back into the forest.