Elephant attack: bus honking saves van passengers’ life

Two people suffered minor injuries and others escaped unhurt after a wild elephant attacked the Maruti Omni vehicle they were travelling by, at Kidu near Bilinele of Subrahmanya forest range on Saturday morning.

Bilinele is on the Uppinangady-Subrahmanya state highway. According to police, eight passengers from Kudloor in Tarikere were on a pilgrimage to the Kukke Subrahmanya Temple when the incident occurred.

However, the horn of a bus which was passing on the stretch scared the pachyderm away, averting a disaster. Van driver Girish said that the bus horn saved them. “Otherwise, we would have lost our lives.” After visiting Dharmasthala, they were on their way to Subrahmanya. As soon as van driver Girish saw the wild elephant at 7.30 am, he stopped the van.

The panicked wild elephant attacked the car and damaged it with its trunk. Due to the attack, the front portion of the car is mangled. Girish, Parvathamma, Dhanya, Prabhukumar, Bhagya, Raja, Chaitra, Prathima and Meenakshi have escaped unhurt.

The bus driver, on noticing the elephant, started blowing the horn. Hearing the horn, the elephant ran inside the forest.

It is said that a wild elephant has been engaged in damaging crops in Subrahmanya, Bilinele, Kaikamba, Cheru, Kombaru, Panja and Yenekallu for the last one month. It is suspected that the same elephant attacked the vehicle passengers. RFO Tyagaraj said the victims had been asked to file a complaint with the police. “The police will, in turn, submit details to the Forest department.”