Indore: In a gruesome incident, a 49-year-old auto-rickshaw driver was trampled to death by an elephant while he was feeding it jaggery in Indore.
The CCTV footage of the incident, which occurred in front of the city’s Raj Nagar police station, has now gone viral on social media.
A case has been registered against mahout Umesh Goswami on charges of negligence in controlling the animal, the police said. It has now come to light that the elephant is missing from the cowshed where it was kept.
The video reveals that the autorickshaw driver, identified as Vijay Holkar, had gone to feed jaggery to the elephant when it pushed him to the ground with its trunk.
During the incident, the mahout hit the elephant near its head with a stick, making it uncontrollable, a police official said. The elephant then lifted the victim with its trunk, threw him down, and trampled his stomach.
Holkar was first taken to the district hospital and later shifted to a private one, where he died during treatment.
A doctor who conducted the post-mortem examination stated that the autorickshaw driver suffered serious internal injuries due to the elephant attack, which led to his death, Chandan Nagar police station in-charge Tilak Karole told Hindustan Times.
The elephant had been brought by some seers to a social event in the city, it was learnt. They were roaming around the city with the pachyderm, seeking alms, when Holkar arrived to feed jaggery to it, the police officer said.
An official said that an investigation is underway to determine whether necessary permission was obtained from the forest department before bringing the elephant into a populated area.
The mahout has been booked under Sections 106 and 291 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the police added.
