Tribal students had a miraculous escape when a wild elephant rescued a calf that had inadvertently entered their hostel room in Odisha’s Balasore district. Students of the Government High School, Kabataghati, still shiver as they recall what unfolded in the early hours of Thursday.
The school management was alerted to a herd of elephants roaming near the residential school, which is situated close to a forest, on Wednesday. “We remained vigilant till late in the night in order to alert boarders if elephants approached the school premises. By midnight, when we did not see any wild elephant, we went to sleep. However, wild elephants entered the school premises in the early hours of Thursday,” Chakradhar Das, Headmaster, said.
Though the school was set up about 65 years ago, it does not have a proper boundary wall.
Separated from the herd, a calf walked into a hostel building having six rooms. Finding rooms locked from inside, the calf, about 5.5 ft. tall, kept knocking at the door of one room. It opened and the elephant calf entered. When the door closed accidentally, the calf was stuck in the room where Biswajit Marandi, Sriram Soren, Samay Soren, Sanatan Tudu and Alok Hansdah, all Class X students, were put up.
“There was no power. Still I could see an elephant standing by my bed. Without making any noise, all five of us slipped under one bed. There are seven beds inside the room. The calf started trumpeting in distress,” Mr. Marandi said.
On hearing the calf, an adult elephant started banging on every window of the hostel building. “It was terrifying. We were trembling,” Mr. Tudu said.
When the adult elephant found the calf, it tried to enter the room through the windows, pulling down two big windows and smashing a third. Heaving a foot through the gap, it cracked the plywood of the cot under which all five students were hiding! Fortunately, the elephant abandoned the idea of entering the room.
“By this time, the calf had started climbing every cot, which broke one after the other, but it wasn’t able to reach the elephant at the window. The calf started throwing every object it could find, including our books, with its trunk. Finally, the elephant pulled the calf out, through smashed window,” Mr. Hansdah said.
The five terrified students huddled through the hour of the mayhem. “I have encountered wild elephants thrice near the school. But Thursday’s event was the most horrifying. I could see death so close,” Mr. Marandi said.
Students in nearby rooms were also shaken up as another elephant was smashing furniture out of desperation. It damaged the water filter, too. The residential school has 199 boys and 64 girls as boarders.
By dawn, the elephants had disappeared into forest.
Human-elephant conflict has been worsening in Odisha. Over 100 human deaths have been reported annually in the past three years. In 2021-22, 106 persons have died in elephant attacks. Moreover, 172 man-elephant encounters left 101 persons injured. During same period, 70 elephants have been found dead in the State.
