Damak, Jan. 6, A meeting of the district security committee of Jhapa Friday decided to mobilize security organizations, including Nepal Army, to cope with the menace of the wild tuskers after three persons lost their lives in an attack in a bordering village in Prithvinagar Village Development Committee Thursday morning.
Two others were injured when the Indian wild beasts entered the human settlement in the southern part of the district.
According to Chief District Officer Gehanath Bhandari, a meeting of the committee held immediately after a field visit to the affected area, took the move to save lives of the people by restricting the movement of the elephants and driving them away to their habitats.
All security agencies were, with special security measures, mobilized to chase away the beasts from Thursday.
He said that the meeting also decided to write the concerned government bodies demanding a special team to tranquilize the elephants and take them to wildlife reserves.
Locals of Prithivinagar and Jalthal were living in terror after a rampaging elephant killed three people in Prithvinagar and moved towards Jalthal.
A herd of elephants was also seen in Chandragadi-9, near the district headquarters Thursday evening. A joint team of Army, Armed Police Forces, Nepal Police and forest rangers led by CDO Bhandari followed the beasts until midnight.
A team of Armed Police Force from its Pathibhara Battalion was also mobilized the whole night in Barhagothe area in Ilam after an elephant entered the human settlement.
The border security office has directed all the concerned bodies to remain in high alert for restraining the movement of the elephants and kept a rapid response team standby in the office.
The border security force has also ordered the concerned bodies to remain high alert round the clock and fire in air in case the elephants were seen.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Balaram Lamichhane said that initiation to dispatch a special team to monitor the movement of the tuskers in Prithvinagar and other vulnerable areas was being taken.
Police were dispatched in most of the identified routes.
The locals of Prthivinagar said that the tuskers’ movement was becoming increasingly difficult to control as they used various routes to enter Nepal from India.
Meanwhile, a task force formed to recommend the government suggestions for implementing effective measures to control the series of terror created by the tuskers has initiated its work in Jhapa.
Mohan Sharma,
member of working team and director of Eastern Regional Forest Directorate, said that the team would summit its suggestions within 15 days.
Though there is no exact data of the number of deaths caused by elephant attacks till date, the record of district forest office Jhapa reveals that nine people were killed by the wild tuskers in two years. If the deaths of the two Bhutanese refuges of Beldangi included, the toll in two years increased to 11.
The office started keeping records of the deaths from 2010 after the government introduced a provision to provide compensation to the victims of the family.
Durga Poudel, 57, Ashmaya Rai, 75, and Gunmaya Basnet, 68, of Prithvinagar were killed by a tusker Thursday.
Meanwhile, farmers in Bardiya district furious after the wild elephants caused damage to the standing crops and their houses.
The beasts enter Bhimpapur of Shankarpur VDC and Shivapur and Hattisar of Thakudwar almost everyday and damage wheat, sugarcane and houses of locals.
They damaged sugarcane and wheat grown in 20 bighas of land in Shanakerpu and Shivapur in the last one month.
A herd of 15-16 elephants enter the villages almost every evening and the villagers apply traditional methods to chase them away, said Om Prakash Yadav of Shankarpur.
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