The elephant strayed from the Alipurduar forests and entered into the Bangladeshi side.

In the event, it killed one person and seriously injured another, besides destroying 25 dwellings in Burimari village in Lalmonirhat district.

The jumbo had kept the forest department, the Border Security Force and BDR on tenterhooks throughout the day. Officials of West Bengal’s forest department accompanied with two ‘kunkis’ and a tranquilising team crossed the fence to bring the tusker home, but failed to tame him. This prompted the BDR to shoot the elephant down.

At first, two tranquiliser darts were also fired at the jumbo. While one missed him, the other one proved ineffective. “Dusk had set in and there was mob fury. We could not tame him with tranquilisers, and we had no say as he had gone on a rampage in Bangladesh. The BDR decided to shoot it down,” said the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Cooch Behar, M C Biswas. The elephant broke open the gate of the barbed wire fencing along the Doradabri border outpost, close to the Changrabandh international check post. The area is under the Mekhliganj police station in Cooch Behar.

When the elephant failed to break the fence, he attacked the gate instead.