Deepor Beel, Assam:
Three elephants were run over by a goods train in March this year in Deepor Beel in Assam. In the last five years across the country, more than 60 elephants have been run over by trains.
But last Thursday's Jalpaiguri tragedy in which seven elephants died after being hit by a train is one of the worst cases. (
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"The Railways are sorry for what happened. We plan to work strategically with the forest department to avoid such incidents in future. The train was not passing through any elephant corridor defined by forest department. We have given direction about speed limit and the kind of caution which has to be followed when passing through such areas," said Anil Saxena, Director (PR) Railways.
The Union Forest and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, however, blamed the Railways entirely for the tragedy.
"The problem is restricted to a few areas, particularly North Bengal and Assam, and as I said the culprit is the Northeast Frontier Railway, we need to wake up, we need to be a little more sensitive. All of us need to demonstrate a greater degree of collective sensitivity to this issue," said Jairam.
But on the ground, the Forest department and the Railways had agreed that forest guards will work in close coordination with the railway guards informing them of the movements of elephant herds. That coordination is rare. In Jalpaiguri, the forest department had not alerted the concerned people.
"We should have a monitoring committee to look at how many times the Forest Department has given intimation to the railway station and how many times railway station has order a caution notice. That needs to be monitored otherwise there will always be a blame game and ultimately poor elephants will get killed," said Bibhab Talukdar, a member of the Elephant Task Force.
The simple two measures are to employ a speed measuring instrument in elephant corridors so that the allegations against the Railways can be substantiated or allow a forest guard to travel along with the engine driver at least for the stretch of the elephant corridor, something with Sri Lanka adapted with great success. Will they be implemented? That remains to be seen.