7 held for attacking forest officials in Dakshina Kannada: Cops
‘’Few persons obstructed the duty of the forest officers on Thursday night. We sent the police force to the spot, but they started pelting stones at jeeps and officials. I was also at the spot, and I had a narrow escape from the attack,” Puttur deputy SP Veeraiah Hiremath said.
The Kadaba police arrested seven people for attacking forest officials and police vehicles in Dakshina Kannada district on Friday.
According to officials, a rogue elephant killed Ranjitha (21), a milk cooperative society employee and Ramesh Rai (55) on Monday at Renjilady in Kadaba taluk of Dakshina Kannada district.
Ranjitha, working at Peradka milk society, was on her way to work at around 6.30 am when the elephant attacked her near her house. After she raised an alarm, Ramesh Rai went to her rescue. But the elephant trampled her and attacked Rai, killing him on the spot, officials said.
Ranjitha succumbed to injuries on her way to the Nelyadi government hospital, they added.
Soon after the incident, angry villagers staged a protest at the spot and obstructed the movement of the body of Rai. The protest was withdrawn after Dakshina Kannada deputy commissioner M R Ravi Kumar and deputy conservator of forests Y K Dinesh Kumar visited the spot and promised to capture the rogue elephants soon.
The forest department officials camped in the village and launched the elephant translocating operation on Tuesday by using department elephants Abhimanyu and three other elephants from the Dubare elephant camp in Kodagu.
After searching for two days, the forest officials managed to catch the rogue elephant, aged around 15 years, on Thursday and shifted it to Dubare for taming. While officials started loading department elephants into the trucks, a few villagers stopped them and demanded the officials catch all the 4-5 elephants in the region which are destructing the crops, officials said.
When forest officers informed them that the elephant capture operation had not ended and that they would resume the operation on another part of the taluk, the villagers insisted on catching the elephants, officials said.
When the officials started moving the jeeps, the angry villagers pelted stones at two police officers and one forest jeep, damaging the front glass of the vehicle. The police resorted to a mild lathi charge to quell the mob. Two forest guards and one police constable sustained minor injuries in the stone pelting, officials said.
‘’Few persons obstructed the duty of the forest officers on Thursday night. We sent the police force to the spot, but they started pelting stones at jeeps and officials. I was also at the spot, and I had a narrow escape from the attack,” Puttur deputy SP Veeraiah Hiremath said.
Hiremath said though there was a legal option to press their demands, the miscreants took the law into their hands. “We arrested seven persons and booked them under sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 144 (joining unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with a deadly weapon), 149 (2) B (Karnataka prevention of destruction and loss of property act 1981), 341 (wrongful restraint), 353 (assault), 333 (hurting public servant to deter his duty ), 307 (attempt to murder), 427 (mischief), 504 (intentional insult) and 506 (threatening with life) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). More arrests will be made after the investigation,” he said