Forest department files FIR against Northeast Frontier Railway

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The State Forest department once again filed an FIR (First Information Report) against the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) for mowing down a wild elephant recently.

The elephant died after it was hit by a speeding train at Panbari of the Chandrapur area near Guwahati in the wee hours on December 11.

A Forest official told The Sentinel on Tuesday that the Department has filed the FIR with the Panikhaiti Police Outpost. He said that the incident happened due to violation of speed guidelines issued by the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

"The NGT guidelines clearly mention that the trains, while passing through the elephant corridors and its adjutant areas, must control their speeds. The NF Railway has been repeatedly violating the NGT guidelines; and innocent jumbos are becoming the victims," said the official.

After receiving approval from the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Court, Kamrup, the Forest department has conducted postmortem on the elephant. The postmortem reveals deep internal injuries that the elephant sustained after it was hit by the speeding train.

NFR sources have, however, claimed that the last week's incident took place outside the designated elephant corridor at Chandrapur. "We had information that a herd elephants were moving. So we were in constant touch with the Forest department to know about the movement of jumbos. The train moved after the Forest department gave us the green signal," said the source.

In another such accident on the night of September 26, 2020, a female elephant and her one-year-old male calf were killed after they were mowed down by a speeding goods train at an area under Lumding in Hojai district.

The impact of the accident was so horrific that the elephant calf was dragged along for about a kilometre before the train finally came to a halt. Locals blamed the Railway authorities for the accident. In October this year, the Forest department seized the engine of a goods train for killing a female elephant and her one-year-old calf.

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