Dibrugarh: In a shocking incident, a 71-year-old man was crushed to death by a wild elephant in Assam's Digboi.
Reportedly, the incident took place on Saturday and the man identified as Nirmal Singh Chetry of Digboi.
According to reports, the incident occurred when Chetry went to paddy field to bring grass for his goat but didn't return.
As the villagers went to the field in search of him in the afternoon, they found him dead.
Notably, a similar incident occurred in the last month, where a 45-year-old Rajib Gogoi was crushed to death by a wild elephant at Bojaloni under Margherita West Range Forest office of Digboi Forest Division.
With the degradation of forests and shrinking of habitats, human-elephant conflicts are rising in the north-eastern states, mainly in Assam and Tripura, with 971 people being killed by wild elephants and 926 tuskers dying from diverse causes since 2010 in Assam.
According to the latest census, India is home to 27,312 elephants and of them, Assam is home to 5,719 Asian elephants, the second largest elephant population in India after Karnataka (6049), a large number of whom often come out of the forests in search of food.
According to the officials of Assam's Forest and Environment department 71 elephants including elephants, calves were killed this year mainly due to being hit by speeding trains, poisoning, electrocution, 'accidental' deaths including falling into ponds and ditches, lightning strikes while 61 people including women died this year in attacks by the jumbos.
In May, 18 jumbos were killed by a lightning strike in the Nagaon district of central Assam.
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