Bhopal: Elephant Tramples Mahout To Death, Taken Into Custody

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): A female elephant, trampled its mahout to death near the Bhanpur bridge area of the city on Wednesday late night, the police said. As per police, the elephant was captured and has been taken into custody by the police.

Chhola police station TI Suresh Chandra Nagar told Free Press that the mahout has been identified as Narendra Kapadia (55). He was a native of Satna, who used to walk his elephant along with five other of his friends across the country. He used to earn his daily bread from donations received through the same, TI Nagar added.

On Wednesday late night, Kapadia had arrived in the city through Parwalia, and had planned to leave for Vidisha on Thursday morning. He tied his elephant at a ground located near the Bhanpur bridge, and had his dinner at 9 pm on Wednesday night. His friends were also present.

He slept near his elephant, while his friends slept at some distance from him. At 11:30 pm, one of his friends named Bhupendra heard the elephant trumpeting, and opened his eyes to witness the elephant lifting Kapadia with his trunk and throwing him repeatedly on the ground, and then trampled him to death. His friends then informed the police, who took the jumbo into custody and referred Kapadia’s body for post-mortem.

The jumbo had attacked another man in Bhopal 2 years ago too: Investigating officer

Investigating officer (IO) at Chhola police station, Rakesh Shukla said that the elephant had allegedly attacked a man in the city two years ago too, when he had come to feed her bananas. IO Shukla added that an NGO dedicated to the welfare of animals had complained to the district forest officer (DFO) regarding her.