In Jharkhand, a tusker on a rampage

Madhu Tati, 75, shudders as he remembers the morning of January 9, 2026 when he couldn’t bear to see the decapitated body of his son. Prakash, who used to operate heavy machinery and earn ₹15,000 a month, in Benisagar village in Majhgaon block of West Singhbhum district, Jharkhand, was killed by an elephant.

Madhu recalls the morning being cold. Most of the family was asleep. “Prakash was recovering from jaundice,” he says. “Every day, we would give him a glass of milk. When we put the vessel of milk on the chulha (earthen stove), we heard some people screaming. They were saying an elephant had entered the village.”

Prakash stepped outside to see what the commotion was about, promising to drink the milk once he returned. An hour went by, but there was still no sign of him. “A villager then came home. He told me that my son had been killed by a mad elephant,” says Madhu.

Madhu’s wife, 70-year-old Kuni Devi, says if her son had only waited for the milk to boil, he would have been alive. “Our world is shattered,” she says. Speaking of her son’s support, she adds, “He was planning to do construction work on the house, which has been pending for two years.”

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Prakash’s wife, Sanju Patro, sobs as she neatly folds her late husband’s clothes. “How are we going to live our lives? Who will now support us financially? Who will look after my younger daughter,” she cries. “I told him not to go out that morning; why did he not listen to me?”

The couple has two daughters — the older daughter, Jaigosini, 30, is married, while the younger one, Kalpana, 20, helps her mother in daily household chores.

Prakash was among the 20 people killed by a wild single-tusked male elephant in the Chaibasa and Kolhan forest areas of West Singhbhum district between January 1 and 9. The attacks have mainly taken place at night in villages. With the elephant going on a rampage, and the death toll rising, a massive search operation has been launched to locate the tusker.

A climate of fear

Benisagar village is situated just a few steps from the border of Odisha. It falls under Kharposh panchayat, which has a population of 14,000. The people of the village mostly depend on farming for their livelihood. Some people have migrated to other States such as Haryana, Punjab, and West Bengal, and work as labourers.

The panchayat head, Pratap Chandra Chatar, 50, says the people are now panic-stricken. With deaths escalating, they only move in groups. All the children of the village have been instructed to remain inside their homes. No resident of the village ventures outside after sunset. Some villagers have also stopped sleeping in their homes and have moved to safer places on higher ground. Many have also begun sleeping at Pratap’s house, a concrete structure with a large hall that can accommodate around 50 villagers. Pratap says he provides them with food at night.

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“I have also asked the villagers to keep their pets inside their homes. On January 9, three people were killed, including a forest official. The elephant not only killed them, but also two buffalo, one goat, and a dog,” says Pratap.

The residents say the elephant has also destroyed many houses in the village. The extent of the damage can be seen everywhere. Thirty-year-old Alka Chatar’s clay and mud house has a gaping hole in it; she says the elephant tried to demolish the house with its tusk.

For others, the experience has been a lot worse. Ram Keria, 35, recounts his encounter with the elephant with horror. “It was terrifying seeing it come. I started running and also grabbed the hands of children who were moving curiously towards it. It killed three people in a 100-metre radius and did not even allow the forest officials to go near their bodies,” he says.

Damodar Kuldi, 20, in Haldia village, was also killed by the elephant on January 9. According to his family, he had stepped out to relieve himself when the tusker attacked, killing him instantly.

Damodar lived with his uncle, Rensu Kuldi. When he met Amrita Kuldi, from Mayurbhanj in neighbouring Odisha, he fell in love and the two of them got married. Amrita, 18, is three months pregnant. “It is painful not having him around. Who will look after my child,” she weeps. Rensu says if Amrita wishes to remarry, the family will support her decision.

As night falls in Haldia, the residents of the village keep bonfires burning and try to stay awake until morning. They say the forest department has supplied materials for bonfires in every village the elephant has walked through.

Mohammad Jabirul, one of the villagers, offers another idea. “If a trench six to seven feet deep is dug around the village, the elephant cannot enter,” he says. Conversations on keeping the elephant at bay animate the village all day.

The search

The first fatal elephant attack was reported on January 1 in Roro and its surrounding villages in the Khuntipani block of West Singhbhum district: three people were killed at night while they were asleep. After that, the tusker killed 17 people in West Singhbhum district.

“We have not got photos of any other elephant through drone cameras; only that one tusker. So, we are sure that it is the same elephant that has killed everyone,” says Aditya Narayan, Divisional Forest Officer, Chaibasa.

Aditya says the team is moving across all the areas where the elephant has gone. “As soon as we get any information through forest rangers, we move towards that place. We have also set up a camp at Benisagar. Our team is monitoring and scanning the area round the clock,” he adds.

More than 100 people have been roped in by the Jharkhand Forest Department to capture the elephant. A team of specialists has been called from Odisha and West Bengal to tranquilise the animal. A team from Vantara, the wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, and conservation centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat, also visited the affected villages, did a recce, and went back. The Vantara team was there to monitor the movement of the elephant and give guidance and suggestions, Aditya says.

“I understand there is a lot of fear among the villagers,” he says. “But everyone needs to cooperate with the forest officials. Even if there is a small lapse, that could increase the chance of an untoward incident. We do not want to take any chances. That is why we send our team to the location even if we think it is just a rumour.”

He emphasises that it is important for villagers to be on alert. “Our team has given instructions to build confidence among the villagers,” he says.

Harish Chatomba, a forester who is deputed at the camp in Benisagar, says, “Elephants are always visible in this area. They pass through the village, but they never attack humans. This is the first time this has happened. Our team is working hard. Our first priority is to trace the elephant, capture it, and make it return to its herd.”

Harish says there is a chance that the elephant might be in the mating phase. “This makes it much more aggressive as it looks for female elephants,” he explains.

Narayan Kumar, the head of one of the teams in the camp, roams around in an open jeep with firecrackers and a torch. “After January 9, no new cases have been reported. On January 14, an elephant was seen in the area but it was not the same one we are looking for. It did not hurt anyone. When we lit the firecrackers, it went into the forest,” he says. Narayan adds that the tusker which has killed 20 people frequently changes its location, which makes it hard to track.

A fatal encounter

On the night of January 6, 2026, four members of a family were killed by the elephant at Babaria village at Noamundi block of West Singhbhum district when they were sleeping outside their house on a gunyu, a temporary platform built by the Ho tribe during the paddy harvest.

The victims were Sonathan Merul, 55; his wife Jhaloko Kui, 45; and two children Damyanti Meral, 8; and Mughu Meral, 5.

Two other children — 12-year-old Jaipal Meral and 8-year-old Sushila Meral — survived the attack. They and are now staying with their uncle, Tupura Laguri. Sushila escaped with a fracture on her left leg. She is undergoing treatment at a government hospital.

“My elder sister, her husband, and their two children all lost their lives. Now, I have to take care of the other two children,” says Tupura. “Losing parents at such a young age is disturbing. Jaipal is still in trauma as he watched his parents being killed.” He adds that they do not want to stay in their house any more; it remains shut.

His wife, Jema Kui, 33, is worried. “We are small farmers and we struggle for our daily earnings. We have three children. To suddenly have two more members in the family is tough. But we cannot ignore them,” she says.

About 200 meters away, a 36-year-old farmer, Gurucharan Laguri, was killed, also while sleeping on a gunyu. He is survived by a five-year-old son. His younger brother, Debo Laguri, 30, who works in a factory, says his brother bled heavily after the elephant attacked him. The animal also injured three children, he says.

Gurucharan’s sister, Jano Laguri, says raising her brother’s child will be a challenge for her. She urged the State government to give a government job to one member of the family and raise the compensation amount from ₹4 lakh to ₹10 lakh.

Dwindling habitats

The Saranda forest is spread over 82,000 hectares in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district. It is home to several animals such as elephants and bison, and also to tribal communities. It hosts the Singhbhum elephant reserve, India’s first elephant reserve created in 2001 under the Central government’s Project Elephant, to conserve elephants and their habitats. It has also been used by the Indian Forest Service (IFS) to train officers.

The forest, however, faces threats. A December 2025 study by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, titled ‘Two Decades of Human-Elephant Conflict in Jharkhand: Spatial and Ecological Drivers of Human Fatalities’, highlights the adverse impact of iron ore mining on local wildlife. It says, “The degradation of elephant habitats in Jharkhand has far-reaching consequences for both elephants and humans. For local communities, the economic and social impacts of the human-elephant conflict are severe. Crop losses, property damage, and human fatalities have become common, particularly in districts such as West Singhbhum, Giridih, and Hazaribagh.”

IFS officer Srikant Verma, who has been associated with several cases of human-animal conflict, cites the possible reasons for this particular elephant’s behaviour. “In the case of a loner, especially a male, such incidents happen when the elephant gets separated from its herd and is not guided by an older elephant. The loner becomes more aggressive if it is instigated by humans.”

Srikant, who also serves as Divisional Forest Officer, Ranchi, adds, “This happened in February 2023, but that was not a large elephant like this one; it was only six years old. In Hazaribagh, it killed five people; in Chatra and Ranchi, it killed four people each. When the loner met a herd, no more deaths were reported.” He explains that elephants are obedient when they are in a herd, as they have protective tendencies.

According to the Jharkhand Forest, Environment, and Climate Change Department, at least 1,270 people have died due to elephant attacks in Jharkhand in the last 18 years. Around 150 elephant deaths have been reported in the same period. A report released by the Wildlife Institute of India, titled ‘Status of Elephants in India: DNA-based Synchronous All-India Population Estimation of Elephants (SAIEE 2021-25)’, says that there are 217 elephants in Jharkhand, compared to 679 recorded in 2017. It says, “Human activities have substantially alerted elephant habitats, confining these elephants to fragmented landscapes linked solely by agricultural lands and human settlements, [which are] insufficient to fulfil their dietary and water requirement adequately. Between 2004 and 2017, 30 elephant mortalities were recorded, primarily due to diseases, electrocution, poisoning, poaching and train accidents.”

Even as the conflict plays out, in the villages, fear is accompanied by hope. Vidyadhar Chatar, a resident of Benisagar, says, “We pray that the elephant should not harm anyone else. I hope it is captured soon, so we can all sleep in peace.”