Surajpur: One more wild elephant was found dead in the forest of Surguja division in Chhattisgarh on Thursday, forest officials said.
The latest fatality was reported from the Rajpur forest range of Balrampur district, while two elephants, one of them a pregnant female, were found dead on June 9 and 10 in adjoining Pratappur forest range of Surajpur district, they said.
"All the three dead jumbos were females and probably belonged to the same herd. The cause of their deaths also seems to be the same," Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Arun Kumar Pandey told.
"The post-mortem of the carcass of the third elephant is being done. However, prima facie the post-mortem reports of the first two pachyderms and symptoms of the third one suggest that these deaths are not natural and they died of toxicity," he said.
"As per the preliminary information, this herd of pachyderms recently moved towards Pratappur forest from Rajpur, during which they rampaged some mud houses in a village. They might have overeaten mahua flowers or consumed urea (fertilizer) stocked by villagers in their houses that led to toxicity," he said.
However, the exact cause of their deaths was yet to be ascertained as no injury marks were found on the carcass.
The forest personnel have launched a probe in the villages, from where the herd had crossed, to trace what they had consumed. Meanwhile, forest officials have also gathered samples from water bodies in the area to check if it was poisoned.
Notably, the thickly-forested northern Chhattisgarh, comprising Surguja, Korba, Raigarh, Jashpur, and Koriya districts, are notorious for events of human-elephant conflict.
With Inputs from PTI
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