They concoct a story of two elephants in distress to make the official visit their village to assess crop damage

A Forest Department staff in H.D. Kote received a frantic call from farmers that an elephant and its calf were stuck in a swamp and were on the verge of drowning.

Within seconds, the official— Range Forest Officer Madhu — left for the spot close to Metikuppe while alerting the field staff to send for back-up to save the elephants in distress.

But on reaching the site, the official realised that he was tricked by the farmers to visit the village to listen to their grievances related to crop damage caused by wild elephants.

The incident took place in a village bordering H.D. Kote on Tuesday where the patience of the local community with the Forest Department staff had run out. Three wild elephants were constantly raiding crops since a week and damaging standing crops.

Despite repeated plea made by villagers to the officials to visit their village to assess crop damage, the Forest Department staff had failed to respond.

The beleaguered farmers were sure that the response will be positive only for animal rescue and thought of tricking the staff and hence concocted a story.

The hapless official received a dressing down from the local villagers, who appreciated him for his timely response to save the animals but admonished him for ignoring the farmers repeated complaints on crop damage caused by elephants.

“You have turned up on learning that wild elephants are in distress ... but showed no such concern for the problems faced by farmers,” they yelled at him and forced the staff to conduct a spot assessment of the crop damage.

Mysuru zilla panchayat president Nayeema Sultana, who reached the spot, directed the officials to accord priority to resolve farmers’ grievances as they were reeling under financial loss for the last two years owing to drought.

Later, Assistant Conservator of Forests Raghu, who too reached the spot, was gheraoed and released only when he assured the farmers of compensating them for crop loss besides taking measures to strengthen the elephant proof trenches and repairing the solar fences.