Elephant found dead near railway tracks in Tripura’s Khowai district, officials launch hunt for one of its missing tusks (India) Debraj Deb, The Indian Express February 10, 2024 An elephant was found dead near the railway tracks at Teliamura in Tripura’s Khowai district on Saturday and officials said one of its tusks is missing. While the elephant is suspected to have died due to a collision with a train, forest officials are yet to ascertain how it lost its tusk. A hunt has been initiated to trace the missing tusk. Speaking to the media, Teliamura Forest Beat Officer Tapan Saha said they received a call about an elephant lying dead near the railway tracks near DM Para School. A team of experts from the Forest department reached the spot and confirmed the dead animal to be a middle-aged elephant. The official also said Forest department experts, who were present on the spot, heard sounds of trumpets from the nearby forests and realised other elephants were present somewhere nearby. On January 20 this year, wild tuskers had damaged a house and the family’s belongings at Chakmaghat in the Khowai district. The attack had happened barely twenty-four hours after Tripura Forest Minister Bikash Debbarma had visited parts of Khowai district after a herd of wild elephants had attacked a mudhouse while a family was inside it on January 19. Debbarma had assured to take steps to curb human-animal conflicts. After a series of human-animal conflicts in Tripura’s Khowai district in the last few weeks, the Forest department has now decided to tag elephants with radio collars by February. According to the officials, Moti, a wild rogue elephant in the area, was involved in some of the incidents and would be radio-collared now, allowing tracking of its movement every 30 minutes. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/elephant-dead-railway-tracks-tripura-khowai-district-officials-hunt-missing-tusk-9155048/