Four members of a family from Calcutta were injured after a forest department elephant attacked their vehicle at Kaziranga National Park in Assam on Monday evening.
Sources said Rupak Guha, 43, wife Keka, 35, and daughters Ratul, 10, and Konkona, 6, were heading back after a safari in a Maruti Gypsy when they were attacked in the Mihimukh area of the park.
The Gypsy driver, Raju Karmakar, was also injured and his condition is said to be critical. The family was released after preliminary treatment at Bokakhat government hospital.
According to park officials, the elephant, Rudra, broke one of its tusks in the attack.
“The elephant is not trained. It is the fault of the [forest] department that the mishap occurred,” a shocked Guha told Metro from the hospital. He said that under the impact of the attack, the car rolled over three times before coming to rest against a tree.
The Guhas, who live in Kidderpore, had reached Kaziranga on Monday afternoon. They will leave for Calcutta on Tuesday.
The range officer of Kohora, under whose jurisdiction the mishap site falls, A. Rahman, said: “The elephant was carrying ration to an anti-poaching camp inside the park. A mahout and a guard were accompanying it.”
He added that the tourists had forced the Gypsy driver to stop when they spotted the elephant and started clicking pictures, paying “no heed to the warnings of the mahout and the guard”.
Guha denied he was taking pictures of the elephant. “The elephant was almost blocking our way. Our driver asked the mahout whether we could pass and he said we could. Suddenly, it charged towards our vehicle and threw it off the road,” Guha said.
Punen Gogoi, the president of the Kaziranga Jeep Safari Association, said Rudra was aggressive in nature and was responsible for similar attacks earlier.
