A wild elephant that had come out of the forest onto the highway attacked Chaudhary, the driver of a truck bearing the registration number Na 4 Kha 1830. Chaudhary, who had got off the truck to escape, died after being attacked by an elephant inside the forest.
What you should know
Rajkumar Chaudhary, a 40-year-old truck driver from Bhaktinagar, Jitpursimara Sub-metropolitan City-1, was killed in an attack by a wild elephant on November 12 at 12 km of the Pathlaiya-Nijgadh road section of Bara on the East-West Highway.
Elephants enter the forest and exit the highway, making travel on the highway dangerous. Exactly a month before the Bara incident, the highway was blocked for hours after the elephant road named Yamagaj was laid in the Chandranigahapur Dhansar section.
Travel on the highway has become unsafe in recent times due to wild animals. For some time now, elephants coming from the national park have started causing trouble on the highway. Even now, Yamagaj sometimes enter the highway and sometimes the settlement in the forests of Rautahat.
A wild elephant that came out of the forest onto the highway attacked Chaudhary, the driver of a truck bearing the number Na 4 Kha 1830. Chaudhary, who got off the truck to save his life, died after being attacked by an elephant inside the forest.
Bara Chief District Officer Dharmendra Mishra said that travel on the highway was somewhat risky due to elephants. ‘Elephants have not been seen on the highway for some time. The park team has darted the elephant,' he said, 'However, the forest team is on alert.'
It is understood that the elephant was seen again on Saturday at a place called Kolbi. Bara Traffic has now requested not to stop vehicles indiscriminately on the road in the forest area of the highway.
DSP Vakil Singh of the Nepal Police Highway Safety and Traffic Management Office Pathlaiya said that traffic on the highway is being affected due to the wild elephant.
Since then, the wild elephant 'Yamgaj', which has been living in the forest under Chandrapur Municipality of Rautahat for a long time, has started to enter the forest, settlements and sometimes villages and create havoc. Security personnel say that the Yamgaj has started affecting traffic by staying on the highway for hours.
A woman from Amlekhgunj who had gone to graze goats died in an attack by the Yamgaj a year ago. A team from the National Trust for Nature Conservation in Chitwan was deployed in the field to control the elephant that had been wreaking havoc in the Bara forest after attacking driver Chaudhary.
A technical team including Dr. Amir Sadoula has been trying to control the elephant for five days, but has not been successful. The elephant that came from the park has been eating the rice crops of farmers in Bara, Rautahat, and Sarlahi, destroying houses, and attacking people.
The park team has said that elephants that break away from the group and walk alone become aggressive. Tigers have repeatedly attacked people on the Pathlaiya-Amlekhgunj section of Parsa National Park. Park staff say that elephants have been roaming that road section for 50 years.
Hemant Kumar Sah, Chief of Division Forest Rautahat, said that the traditional paths of wild elephants have been destroyed by man-made structures, farming, fences, and settlements. This is why their conflicts with humans have increased, according to Chief Sah.
It has been found that not only elephants but also small wild animals pose a risk to passengers on the highway. Small vehicle accidents occur when wild animals like wild boars and deer cross the road.
The police have not kept separate statistics on how many small vehicles have collided with wild animals on the highway. On 20th December 2077, a 10-year-old female tiger died after colliding with a car in the forest of Bara, Jitpur Simara Sub-metropolitan City-1 on the East-West Highway.
A year ago, Roshan Karki of Chandrapur-5 died when his motorcycle collided with a wild boar on the Sarlahi-Bardibas section. Such incidents have increased in recent years on the highways that cut through the dense forests of the Terai National Park. Forest officials say that the incidents of encounters between protected wild animals and people on the highway have increased the insecurity of both.
