Three elephants run over by a passenger train in Assam

According to the reports, the Dibrugarh bound Vivek Express had hit the elephants, when a herd of wild elephants were crossing the railway tracks near Jugijan in the Middle Assam district at around 11-50 pm on Sunday.

The NF Railway officials said that, the incident happened when a herd of wild elephants came on railway tracks and dashed against the train engine near Jugijan railway station.

A top Railway official said that, the incident happened when the herd of elephants was crossing the railway track from Kunduli Mari village to Santipur village at a location about 137 km from Guwahati.

“When the herd of elephants crossed the railway track, however neither train was stalled nor any injury to any passenger. The train driver had reported the incident at Jugijan railway station at around midnight. A railway patrolling team had reached the area on Monday moring and discovered the dead body of three elephants aged about 15, 13 and 3 years at the accident site and alerted the state forest department,” Pranav Jyoti Sharma, the Cheif Public Relation Officer of NF Railway said.

Meanwhile, the NF Railway has alerted all train drivers to avoid recurrence of such incident for the safety of passengers and wild elephants.

Over 150 wild elephants had died in India in this year so far, while train hit them when the wild elephants tried to cross the railway tracks.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)