The three-month-old female, which stumbled and fell into a ditch as the herd was being pushed back into the forest, was later rescued by the villagers and handed over to the forest officials.

The officials took the wailing calf to the Nandankanan biological park nearby but wildlife experts felt the baby should be reunited with the herd.

Forest guards took the lost calf into the jungles last evening and waited for the herd, watching from a distance, to come and take the baby away.

After waiting for a long time, the elephant herd came up, felt and sniffed the calf for some time, and left without the baby. Surprisingly, the calf rushed in the opposite direction towards the forest guards.

The calf was taken to the Nandankanan zoo where it was being fed milk, park sources said.

The chief wildlife warden,Saroj Kumar Patnaik told PTI that forest officials would be making another attempt later today to reunite the calf with the herd.

Asked why the herd had left the calf behind, Patnaik said perhaps the elephants did not accept it.

Elephants are very sensitive and have a strong sense of smell. As the calf had been among humans for over seven hours, the smell might have been repulsive for them, he said.

The incident also threw light on the growing menace of pachyderms frequently entering human habitations and destroying crop, particularly during winter.

The government had declared Chandka, a 169 sq km reserve forest close to this city, as a wildlife sanctuary and elephant reserve in the early 80's.

Strong barbed wire fencing had been erected and deep trenches dug around the 128 km boundary of the sanctuary which had collapsed at many points allowing the elephants to slip out and march towards nearby villages, a senior forest official said.

Villagers affected by the menace are an angry lot today.``Unless the government does something to stop the elephants from coming out of the reserve, we will kill them,'' inhabitants of Binjhagiri village said.