Elephant on rampage in India's West Bengal smashes structures, cars

A wild elephant Wednesday went on a rampage in India's eastern state of West Bengal, smashing at least 100 residential structures of people and cars in its way, besides forcing panic stricken people to run away for safety, locals said.

No one was injured or killed by the wild animal, who was later on tranquillized by wildlife officials and taken to the forest.

The incident took place in Siliguri town, about 566 km north of Kolkata city, the capital of West Bengal.

Video footage broadcast by television news channels showed the elephant running amok through streets trampling parked cars, motorbikes and structures. Huge crowds of people gathered to watch the wild animal on rampage from balconies and roof tops.

Officials told media the elephant had wandered from the nearest Baikunthapur forest.

"The elephant didn't attacked the people instead it went on rampaging everything that came in its way," an official said. "It seemed the animal was scared and trying to find its way to the forest back."

Following the hours of disturbance, the men from forest department fired tranquillizer darts to control the wild animal.

"After shooting couple of tranquillizers, officials brought a crane to lift it into a truck and take it away from the town," local resident Rishikesh Banerjee told Xinhua over telephone. "We were told it would be released back in the forest area."

Unconfirmed reports put the number of damaged structures at 100. However, the number of damaged cars and motorbikes was not known immediately.

Experts say wild animals stray into residential areas usually in search of food. However, the human presence makes them insecure, following which they resort to attacking people. At times these creatures are attacked by scared villagers in retaliation which also proves fatal for them.

In India the man-animal conflict is on increase because of the growing human population and expansion of towns, cities and residential areas.

There are strict laws in force in India against the killing of wild animals.

On Sunday, wildlife officials in Bengaluru city captured a leopard from a school after it mauled six people.

Wildlife expert say mass urbanization, denudation of forests, encroachment of forestland, vanishing of buffer zones in the forests and extraction of medicinal plants are some of the reasons responsible for increasing conflict between humans and wild animals. Endit