A 51-year-old woman farmer was injured by a wild elephant near her farm in Erukampattu village near Pernambut town in Vellore district, in the early hours, on Wednesday, April 12, 2023.
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Police said that G. Kokila, a farmer, was on her way with her husband S. Gopal to their farmland on the village road when they saw the wild elephant on the stretch. Immediately, the animal chased the duo, who ran for cover. Kokila sustained fractures on her hip when the elephant hit her before it went into nearby banana fields in the village. The incident took place around 6.15 a.m.
“A special team led by Pernambut ranger P. Satish Kumar has been deployed to send the elephant back into the Kaundinya wildlife sanctuary in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh,” S. Kalanidhi, District Forest Officer (DFO), Vellore, told The Hindu.
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Based on alerts from village residents, the Pernambut police and Forest Department officials rushed to the spot and took the injured farmer to the Government Taluk Hospital in Pernambut town. Later, doctors at the hospital referred Kokila to the Government Medical College Hospital in Vellore town. She is said to be out of danger.
Meanwhile, a team of forest officials has camped in the village to ensure the return of the elephant, believed to be male, into a nearby sanctuary.
The village is located on the fringes of the Sarangal Reserve Forest (RF), one of the 10 RFs in Pernambut range that spreads over 20,000 hectares. Sarangal is a border RF connecting Vellore, Tirupattur and Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh.
Forest officials said the wild elephant was not part of a herd, which usually migrates from the sanctuary to nearby RFs, especially during summer for food and water. As the Sarangal RF is part of an elephant corridor, Forest officials said that the elephant would have passed through the village on its migration route. Another reason it could have strayed is the change in cultivation pattern, as farmers in the region have started to cultivate paddy and mangos in large areas.