A 46-year-old farmer was killed by a wild elephant on the fringes of Sarinagunda Reserve Forest (RF), near Gudiyatham, in Vellore.
Forest officials said K. Subramani, a farmer from Sarinagunda village bordering the Koundinya Wildlife Sanctuary in Chittoor, had cultivated sugarcane on a three-acre plot near the village. Around 2 a.m., when he was guarding the field, a herd of 11 elephants from the sanctuary strayed into it. He tried to flee but one of the animals attacked him. He died on the spot.
“The elephant attack happened near the forest bordering the sanctuary. The lone tusker, which was damaging crops in the Gudiyatham range, has not been spotted for a week in our limits. This leads us to believe it may have joined the herd,” Saravanan Babu, Forest Range Officer (Gudiyatham), told The Hindu.
