The death of Samal Murmu didn’t come as a shock to many in Rasunia, a nondescript village in Jharkhand’s Saraikela-Kharsawan district. The 36-year-old farm labourer was killed in an elephant encounter when he went to relieve himself in the fields on the outskirts of the village, early in the morning of October 17.
“Such deaths are common in our part of the world,” village sarpanch Mangal Majhi told IndiaSpend five days after the incident.
As the head of the village, it was Majhi’s responsibility to help file the paperwork required for Murmu’s family to claim compensation from the forest department. These include eye-witness accounts of the incident, a post-mortem report, and identity cards of family members among other documents.
“After Samal’s death, the forest department immediately released Rs 50,000 for the family,” Majhi said. “They will release an additional Rs 3.5 lakh after we send them these documents. But tell me, what is the value of Rs 4 lakh in today’s times? Blink an eye and that money will be gone.”
Majhi was making the case that the government has to come up with a rehabilitation programme for families of the victims of such attacks, in addition to monetary compensation.
About 2 km from Majhi’s office, outside Murmu’s dimly-lit, one-room thatched house in the village, his wife Mungli sat awkwardly on the floor. “What’s your name?”...”What happened that morning?”...”How did you find out about your husband’s death?”
Every question asked of Mungli led only to one response: “I told him not to leave home before sunrise.”
“My mother has been this way since she heard about our father’s death,” said Mungli and Samal’s eldest daughter Geeta. The 15-year-old now takes care of her mother and two younger siblings, 13-year-old Manisha and nine-year old Sunita.
“That day, my father went to the fields around 5.30 in the morning,” Manisha recalled. “Two other neighbours went with him. At 9 a.m., mukhiya ji and others told us that all three of them were attacked by an elephant and that my father had died. We knew that elephants were camping in forest areas near our village. For days, nobody from our family had left home before sunrise or after sunset.”
The elephant that attacked Murmu was part of a herd of 18-20 elephants that had camped in the Dalma forest range areas close to Rasunia since the last week of September.
“For decades, elephants used to come here from Odisha and then head to Dalma Elephant Sanctuary,” Majhi explained. “Previously they would cross the forest via the area where the Chandil Dam has been built. But since the construction of the dam, the elephants have had to change their route. As a result, they now pass through nearby villages--including ours--often raiding crops, damaging homes, and even killing people.”
Construction of the Chandil Dam, part of the Subarnarekha Multipurpose Project, started in 1982. Completed in 2022, the dam was built over a span of 40 years. Residents of Rasunia widely agreed that before the construction of the dam, the elephants rarely disturbed villages.
Observations by forest officials in a 2023 report on Elephant Corridors of India, prepared by the environment ministry in collaboration with state forest departments, supported these claims. As per this report, the use of the Dalma-Chandil corridor by elephants “decreased due to Subarnarekha canal, habitat degradation, Railway line, and human habitation expansion”.
IndiaSpend has reached out to authorities in the Saraikela-Kharsawan Forest Department for data on cases of elephant and human casualties in man-animal conflict before and after the dam was constructed. This story will be updated when we receive a response.
Rising conflict
Data tabled by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in the Parliament in July 2024 indicate that between 2019 and 2024, 474 people were killed in Jharkhand in man-elephant conflicts. This is the second highest number across India, next only to Odisha which recorded 624 deaths in these five years.
Humans are not the only casualties in this conflict. Jharkhand has two distinct elephant populations, namely Palamau and Singhbhum. The environment ministry, through the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), also conducts an elephant census every five years. As per the latest census data, released in 2017, Jharkhand had 679 elephants. The ministry is yet to release the 2022 census data.
According to Wildlife Trust of India (WTI’s) 2017 report titled Right to Passage, the Palamau population occupies about 1,200 sq km of the Betla National Park, the Palamau Tiger Reserve and adjoining areas.
The report mentions that in recent years, elephants have started moving into the new areas of Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Ramgarh, Bokaro, Dhanbad, Giridih, Deogarh, Dumka, Pakur, Godda and Sahibganj, passing through fragmented forest patches, agricultural land and human settlements.
Elephants have also started moving to Bihar and West Bengal from the Palamau and Singhbum areas. This, the report says, has increased human-elephant conflict, especially crop depredation, and minimising such conflicts has become a major challenge for the area division managers.
Wildlife biologist and former member of Jharkhand State Wildlife Board DS Srivastava pointed out that the central Indian elephant, also called the Mayurbhanji elephant, is now searching for new homes in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
“The Mayurbhanji elephant, originally found in Mayurbhanj in Odisha, Singhbhum in Jharkhand, and Purulia in West Bengal, had home ranges in Dalma, Saranda, Sambalpur, Saraikela Kharsawan and Similipal areas of Odisha, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. This population was disturbed because of heavy iron ore mining and other development activities in these areas,” he said.
With an aim to provide financial and technical support to elephant range states for the protection of elephants, the Government of India in 1991 launched Project Elephant. Among the main objectives of the scheme were protection of elephants, their habitats and corridors, addressing issues of man-animal conflict, and welfare of captive elephants.
The responsibility of implementation of Project Elephant rests on its Steering Committee headed by the Union Environment Minister. The Committee also includes representatives of the Government as well as non-government wildlife experts and scientists. Other committees include Captive Elephant Health care and Welfare Committee and the Central Project Elephant Monitoring Committee.
While details of the proceedings of the fifth Central Project Elephant Monitoring Committee meeting on March 6, 2023 revealed that the sample collection exercise for the estimation of the 2022 elephant population is currently underway, an interim copy of the census report, accessed by The Indian Express, showed that the number of tuskers in Jharkhand was down to 217 in 2022-23--a drop of 68% from the 2017 number.
The wrath of the elephants
Approximately 90 km from Murmu’s house in Rasunia, a narrow road cuts through the Musabani forest in East Singhbhum district, leading to a village called Uparbanda.
Residents of this village pay regular visits to the graves of five elephants that were electrocuted in November 2023 after they came in contact with a 33 kilovolt wire in the forest range bordering their fields. The herd included two calves and three adult elephants.
“We come here once or twice a week and pray to the elephant gods to protect our families,” Sheela Devi, 50, told IndiaSpend. Residents of the village believe that the death of the elephants might bring bad luck to the village.
At the time of electrocution, then Divisional Forest Officer Mamata Priyadarshi had ordered a probe.
“It was an unfortunate incident. We had immediately ordered a probe and a few months later found that Hindustan Copper Limited had not followed the set guidelines, and that lapses on their part had resulted in the accident,” she told IndiaSpend.
On December 3, we reached out to officials at HCL corporate offices in Delhi and Kolkata, and company representatives at the Indian Copper Complex, the HCL plant in Jharkhand’s Singhbhum district for a response regarding these allegations and to know about the steps taken by the company to prevent similar accidents in the future. This report will be updated when we hear from them.
After this incident, a four-member enquiry committee was set up to probe this and other similar cases of elephant electrocution in East Singhbhum and Giridih Districts of Jharkhand. The committee submitted its report on December 1, 2023.
The report, a copy of which was seen by IndiaSpend, quoted eyewitnesses from the village who informed the committee that complaints regarding sagging in the line were sent to the electricity department and to HCL multiple times in the past. The issue, however, was never addressed.
The Committee also recommended initiation of a case of criminal negligence against HCL. “During the enquiry, of incident 3, criminal negligence of the Hindustan Copper Limited has been reflected. Hence a criminal action should be initiated on priority.”
Even as the forest department’s probe found HCL, a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Mines, responsible for the incident, their own role in the case cannot be ignored.
“Forest department had dug a trench to separate our farmlands from the forest area,” said Sheela Devi.
“I came here in the evening on the day of the accident. It seemed as if the mud dug from the trench was not cleared. Some officials told us that to make way for themselves, the mother elephant in the herd might have moved the mud to fill the trench and while she stood over the pile, her trunk came in contact with the wire. And since members of the herd were in touch with each other, they all got electrocuted at the same time,” she added as she recalled the day of the accident.
DFO Priyadarshi, however, argued that trenches have been part of the plantation for decades. “I am not trying to defend the forest department here,” she said. “It was a mishap…an accident, and anything could have led to it. Maybe the soil was loose, or the leg of one of the elephants in the herd slipped. I am not defending the trench, but that alone was not the reason why this happened. We can say that multiple reasons led to the unfortunate incident of electrocution.”
In conversations with IndiaSpend, several forest officers across Jharkhand accepted that electric fencing and trenches are still widely used to divert elephants from their traditional migratory routes.
“In 2017, the West Bengal government dug a 50-foot trench on the Jharkhand-Bengal border in Ghatsila and Chakulia to block elephants from migrating,” said Alok Varma, Saraikela’s DFO. “Such methods are also adopted by forest officials within a state to prevent elephants from entering their jurisdiction. But more often than not, these methods prove to be counterproductive as they either result in electrocution or force elephants to take alternate routes through villages and national highways.” This, he added, results in unnatural deaths of elephants.
Data tabled by the Union environment ministry in Parliament in July 2024 revealed that India lost 528 elephants in the last five years due to unnatural causes including poaching, poisoning, electrocution, and train accidents. In Jharkhand alone, 30 elephants died due to electrocution during this period.
Living with fear
In May 2024, the Jharkhand Forest Department came up with Hamar Hathi, a mobile-based application used to provide information about elephant movement to people living in villages near elephant corridors in the state.
Prajesh Jena, DFO in Palamu district, said, “Forest officials across the state are always on patrol duty on the ground. The app is updated based on inputs provided by them and on traditional elephant migratory routes, and accordingly it sends alerts to villagers about elephant sightings.”
But the app was of no use to Sunil Mahto and his family in Ormanjhi, a village on the outskirts of Ranchi, when an elephant raided their field and home while they were asleep on the night of September 30.
“We don’t know about any app,” Sunil said, as he took IndiaSpend on a tour of his two-acre land, large tracts of which had been damaged by marauding elephants along with the rear wall of his home. “Usually, villagers inform each other about elephant sightings in nearby areas. But even when we know that elephants are around, we can never predict when they’ll come out of the forest and raid our homes and fields.”
“Luckily,” said Sunil, “there was no human casualty because since the day we learned that a herd of 20-plus elephants is camping near our village, we started sleeping in the primary school.”
Such practices are common in villages like Ormanjhi. “The forest department distributes torches and firecrackers to keep elephants at bay,” Arvind Mahto, a member of the local Gram Sabha, said. “But it’s not always possible to keep vigil at night. So once we find out that elephants are near our village, everybody gathers at the school and stays there till the elephants leave or are chased away.”
Arvind and other members of the gram sabha coordinate with gram sabha members of nearby villages via WhatsApp to keep track of elephant movement.
“The app is supposed to alert us based on information provided by forest department patrol parties,” Arvind pointed out. “But how many forest officials ever visit the ground? They are few in number, and we cannot rely on them or their information. The forest department, in most cases, is always the last party to respond.”
Thus, every year, as elephants pass through Ormanjhi, villagers gather in public spaces and remain together for days till they leave. While this helps prevent human casualty, elephants still damage crops and homes.
“Until a few decades ago, elephants were not eating our paddy or entering villages,” Arvind said. “We need to ask why they are doing that now.”
Mining and Mahua
Wildlife biologist and former member of Jharkhand State Wildlife Board D.S. Srivastava said changes in the behavioural patterns of elephants, including their eating habits and aggressive nature, are directly linked to destruction of elephant habitats.
“The dots are easy to connect,” Srivastava said. “Elephants used to feed on bamboo in the forest. But as humans entered the forest and started using that bamboo for construction, food, irrigation, and other purposes, elephants were forced to change their diet to crops such as rice.
“Similarly,” he said, “their habitat was systematically destroyed. Jharkhand’s forest cover has shrunk significantly over the years. This has forced elephants to move out of the forest. Mining companies do not follow rules. Mine pits are not closed, resulting in elephants frequently falling into them and dying. Railway lines, national highways, dams and other infrastructure projects are rarely constructed keeping elephant habitats in mind.”
The Forest Survey of India, an autonomous body under the environment ministry, in its 2001 report mentioned that in 1997, 21,692 square kilometres (sq km) of Jharkhand’s total area of 79,714 sq km was covered by forest. By 2021, the forest cover extended to 23,721 sq km--an increase of 2,029 sq km.
District-wise analysis of the forest cover, however, reveals a different pattern. As per a 2023 MoEFCC report titled Elephant Corridors of India, Jharkhand has a total of 17 elephant corridors. An IndiaSpend analysis of the report shows that these corridors are primarily concentrated in three districts--Ranchi, East Singhbhum, and West Singhbhum.
State of Forest reports for the years 2001 and 2021 by the Jharkhand Forest Department show that the forest cover in Ranchi went from 1,732 sq km in 2001 to 1,168.78 sq km in 2021. While East Singhbhum saw an increase in forest cover from 885 sq km in 2001 to 1080.69 sq km in 2021, West Singhbhum, much like Ranchi, saw the forest cover shrink from 3,727 sq km to 3,368.44 sq km during this time.
DFO Varma in Saraikela also pointed to the changing patterns of the process of fermentation of mahua, a traditional alcohol consumed largely by the tribals, as a reason for elephants turning violent at times.
“Several people now have started using ethanol as a catalyst to speed up the process,” Varma said. “Ethanol has a very strong smell and that attracts elephants. There have been cases where elephants have consumed large amounts of mahua while it was being fermented, following which they charged upon humans.”
Experts also pointed to a possible link between the conflict and a surge in mining practices in the state.
“If you draw a mining map of Jharkhand and compare it with a map of cases of man-elephant conflict, you will see a correlation,” wildlife biologist Srivastava said.
According to the Jharkhand State Mineral Development Corporation Limited, the state has 12 major coalfields where government and private companies such as Tata Steel, Tenughat Vidyut Nigam Ltd, and Damodar Valley Corporation are undertaking mining activities.
“As per rules, the miners need to reclaim the land disturbed by mining activities after the mining there is over,” Srivastava said. “They need to fill the excavated area. But nobody follows the rules and usually 50-60 ft empty pits are left behind. There have been cases where elephants have died after falling into these pits.”
The 2017 WTI report also mentioned that the central Indian elephant habitat, which also includes Jharkhand, is one of the most fragmented and degraded because of encroachment, shifting cultivation and mining activities.
It noted that the Dumriya-Kundaluka and Murakanjiya elephant corridor in the Musabani Forest Range has been left “impaired” by development activities in Musabani and Rakha Mines area of Jharkhand. Situated near Jamshedpur, these are among the oldest British-era copper mines in India.
A blind political spot
Wildlife experts and forest officials agreed that while there are no permanent solutions to the man-animal conflict, a carefully calibrated approach towards development is the only way forward.
“We will have to return their habitats to them,” Srivastava said. “The only way to ensure that there are no casualties--human or elephant--is to include locals in policymaking. Most of what is being done in the name of ‘Project Elephant’ is just an eyewash. Forest officials decide elephant routes as per their whims and fancies and sanction development projects. This has to stop.”
DFO Varma hinted at paucity of funds: “We need more patrol parties on the ground, more staff, and better technology to deal with the crisis at hand.”
IndiaSpend reached out to the Union environment ministry and officials in charge of Project Elephant for comment. We will update this story when we receive a response.
However, this problem is not on the political radar of any party in a state that recently went to polls.
“I am hardly surprised. These are real issues of the people. Why will the politicians talk about them?” quipped Rasunia’s Mangal Majhi. In Ormanjhi, Arvind Mahto has a similar response. “In the last five years, no politician has set foot in our village. How will they even know what we are dealing with? And honestly, they should stay away from this. It’s our forest. Let us handle it.”
Meanwhile, in Rasunia, Murmu’s family await the remaining Rs 3.5 lakh in compensation; Musabani’s Sheela Devi vows to visit the elephant graves every alternate day with other women from the village to pray before the elephant gods, and Ormanjhi’s Mahto family have gotten together to rebuild their home before elephants strike again.
This report is republished with permission from IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.
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