On February 11, 2014, K Devraj was attacked by a mob at Kallare village in Alur taluka.

When I met him at his office the day after, Devraj had a big bandage wrapped around his head, and the left side of his face was swollen from the beating.

He was miserable, and he had good reason to be. As Range Forest Officer for Alur, he was the face of authority on the frontlines of the man-elephant conflict in Hassan. The assault he had endured at the hands of the locals was one more painful reminder that the situation had escalated far beyond his ability to cope.

Early in the morning of the previous day Krishnegowda, a farmer in Kallare village, was heading towards his farm when a tusker charged him. Krishnegowda was trampled to death. When Devraj visited the scene as part of his official duties, enraged locals turned on him and on other visiting officials.

The mob violence was symptomatic of a public fury that had increased with each such attack, and now had reached a boiling point. The tolerance with which the locals initially regarded the elephants had worn thin; official promises to solve the problem only served to add fuel to the local ire. The villagers saw in each attack, each destroyed crop, each death, a reinforcement of their belief that authority cared only for the elephants, but not for the humans involved in the conflict.