In 9 Days, Elephants Killed 22 In Jharkhand’s Chaibasa. Why Is Human–Elephant Conflict Rising?

Last week, in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district, particularly in the Chaibasa and Kolhan forest division areas, elephants killed 22 people within just nine days. Human deaths due to elephant attacks are not uncommon in Jharkhand, but such a high number of fatalities within a single region and within a single week has never been recorded before.

Over the last two decades, human–elephant conflict has risen sharply. The impact is most visible in the tribal-dominated states of Central India—Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal—where loss of human life has increasingly become routine.

According to India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, between 2017 and 2022, Odisha recorded the highest number of deaths due to human–elephant conflict—499 fatalities. Jharkhand followed with 462 deaths, while West Bengal recorded 385 and Assam 358. Meanwhile, between 2018–19 and 2022–23, Chhattisgarh saw 337 deaths.

If Jharkhand’s numbers from those five years are broken down month-wise, it means that elephants killed an average of 7.7 people every month. But the trend appears to be worsening. Between the last five years, 2020 to 2025, elephants have killed 525 people in Jharkhand, meaning an average of 8.75 deaths per month.

Most reports based on such figures place the blame almost entirely on elephants. I, too, have used phrases like “elephant terror” in several places. But in this report, we attempt to look deeper: Why is human–elephant conflict increasing? Why are elephants killing humans?

22 Deaths in West Singhbhum: A Village That Had Never Seen Elephants Before

Between 1 January and 9 January, elephants killed 22 people in West Singhbhum district. On the night of 6 January, in Bawariya village under the Noamundi range, an elephant killed six people in a single incident.

Rup Singh Laguri, a resident of Bawariya and an eyewitness, says he has never seen an elephant in the village in his 49 years of life.

“We used to sleep freely in straw huts outside our homes,” Laguri said. “There was never an elephant incident here before, so there was no fear. But since the night of 6 January, fear has spread across the village. Suddenly, there was shouting that an elephant had entered. Even the forest department called us and said an elephant had come to our village. But by the time they reached, several people were already dead.”

The elephant killed four members of a family sleeping in a straw hut outside their home, and two others in a nearby hamlet.

After the incident, the village is living under a cloud of panic. With a population of around 2,000, the village has multiple hamlets. Every hamlet is now deploying groups of ten people for night patrols. The forest department provided two torches and a few firecrackers to scare elephants away, but villagers say it is far from enough. The firecrackers have already run out, and two torches cannot possibly cover such a large population.

Laguri repeatedly stresses one point that elephants had never entered the village before this attack. So the question is obvious—why are elephants now entering human settlements?

Disrupted Corridors, Disoriented Elephants

The “Haathi Mitra” group in Jharkhand works on awareness and conflict prevention related to human–elephant encounters. Its founder, Tapas Karmakar, says the region where these incidents are happening has historically been an elephant corridor.

“The forest of Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district connects to Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum (Chaibasa) area,” he explained. “Elephants have always moved through this region. The elephants that come into the Saranda forest often arrive through the Chaibasa route, and they come from Similipal. But now this corridor is being heavily disturbed. Houses are coming up, roads are being built, and development projects are being set up. Because of this, elephants are wandering into unfamiliar directions. That is why incidents are increasing.”

Saranda forest, located in this region, is known as Asia’s largest Sal forest belt. It is extremely dense and spread across 82,000 hectares, stretching into multiple districts of Jharkhand and connecting to Odisha. The region is also home to over 2,000 million tonnes of iron ore reserves, a globally known deposit.

Saranda is considered Jharkhand’s primary elephant habitat. Until the early 1990s, it remained a thriving zone for elephants. But mining has severely disrupted their habitat. Dr. Rakesh Kumar Singh, who has researched these landscapes, particularly elephant ecology, believes that the root of the conflict lies in policy failure.

According to his research, mining and linear development have deeply disturbed elephant habitats. Forest land has been diverted for highways and other projects, disrupting elephant routes. Many companies claim they do not disturb elephant corridors. But, Dr. Singh argues, they often misunderstand what a corridor truly means.

“A corridor does not only ean a narrow movement path,” he explains. “Companies may leave the corridor untouched on paper, but they carry out mining and development in elephants’ prime traditional habitat. This disorients elephant movement and intensifies human–elephant conflict.”

Mining has had a heavy impact. Elephants are now avoiding their traditional habitats and migrating into new areas. And when they enter villages, the conflict escalates into retaliatory violence, leading to deaths on both sides. Elephants are chased away from one place to another, often aggressively.

A Death While Chasing the Elephant Away

On 9 January, elephants killed three people in Haldia and Benisagar villages under the Manjgaon block of West Singhbhum. Among the victims was 18-year-old Damodar Kuldi.

Dinesh Hembram, a resident of Damodar’s hamlet, recalled what happened, “At around six in the morning, there was shouting that an elephant had entered. Villagers were chasing it away, and Damodar also joined. But suddenly the elephant turned back and charged at the people. Damodar came under its attack. The elephant grabbed him with its trunk and beat him, and he died.”

After this, villagers began discussing how deforestation is forcing elephants off their routes, making them more aggressive. Dinesh says elders in the village believe humans are building homes inside elephant territory, cutting forests, and that this is changing elephant behaviour.

In Saranda, large-scale deforestation has occurred due to unchecked and illegal mining. The Shah Commission’s 2010 inquiry stated that Saranda’s biodiversity has been seriously impacted. A study by the Wildlife Institute of India (2015–16) found that plant species in Saranda dropped from 300 to just 87.

According to one report, in the last 15 years, around 16,000 hectares of forest land in Jharkhand has been diverted for non-forest purposes in the name of mining and development. Crucially, most mining has taken place in prime elephant habitat areas.

In the last five years alone, 101 deaths have occurred in the Singhbhum region, making it the second worst-hit after the Ranchi region, which recorded 173 deaths. Both regions include multiple forest divisions.

Forest Department Says Deaths Have Reduced—But Data Suggests Otherwise

The Jharkhand Forest Department claims deaths due to human–elephant conflict have declined. But when five-year data is compared, the numbers suggest an increase.

Between 2017 and 2022, Jharkhand recorded 462 deaths. Between 2020 and 2025, the figure rose to 525 deaths.

Jharkhand’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Paritosh Upadhyay, acknowledged in a conversation with Outlook that human interference in forests has increased.

“Many villages have come up even inside the Palamu Tiger Reserve,” he said. “Population is increasing inside forest areas, and with it, human activity. That is one reason. But what is most alarming is habitat fragmentation. Earlier, elephants had access to large continuous patches. Now development activities are fragmenting those patches. When connectivity breaks, elephants begin wandering. Traditional corridors through which they moved from one patch to another have also been fragmented. These corridors have now been re-identified so they can be developed.”

Upadhyay also said that Jharkhand’s forest land may not have reduced in size, but the quality of the forest has deteriorated, affecting elephants’ access to food and shelter. The department plans to manage food trees and vegetation within corridors and habitat areas.

Loss of Natural Food, Rise of Crop-Raiding Behaviour

Due to forest destruction, dense cover has drastically. As a result, elephants are losing shelter and natural food sources. Experts say that to sustain a healthy elephant population, a 200 sq km stretch of dense forest is necessary—without villages or human settlements in between.

Environmental and wildlife expert Dr. Daya Shankar Srivastava says a dangerous tendency is emerging among younger elephants due to a lack of natural food. They are abandoning traditional forest diets and turning towards grains stored in homes and crops in fields.

“We need to understand why this is happening,” he said. “Elephants have an extremely strong sense of smell. A single elephant needs 700 to 1,400 kg of food. If it stays in one place, the forest there will be destroyed. That is why elephants keep moving. But once a year they return to their old range, and by then the forest food regenerates—this is how the cycle works.”

“But now,” he added, “when they return, they find roads, mines, dams. So they enter villages and fields and feed on crops. Over time, this develops into a habit.”

Dr. Srivastava says the conflict can be reduced through both long-term and short-term planning. Mining must be stopped, forests must be restored, and resort-building and wildlife tourism inside forest areas should be restricted. Elephants move to their home ranges during summer, so those forests must be replenished with fruit, flowers, and edible leaves. Villagers must also be made aware that they should not stone elephants, set fires, or chase them aggressively—otherwise, elephants may eventually move from villages into towns.

Odisha and Chhattisgarh: Mining-Driven Deforestation and Expanding Conflict

Large-scale tree cutting has also occurred in Odisha and Chhattisgarh in the name of mining. One report states that in the last 40 years, the highest diversion of forest land for mining—10,451 hectares—has taken place, much of it in Odisha’s Keonjhar district.

Another report suggests that mining in Keonjhar has affected nearly 530 villages through human–elephant conflict. Yet another report claims that in Odisha, over the last decade, 1.85 crore trees have been cut for road construction.

Biswajit Mohanty, a Cuttack-based environmentalist and secretary of the Odisha Wildlife Society, says human–elephant conflict is especially intense in Odisha’s Angul, Deogarh, Kendujhar (Keonjhar), and Dhenkanal districts.

“In Angul, canal construction divided the region, trapping elephants,” he said. “Iron ore production has also increased sharply. In Dhenkanal, our study found that forest acquisition increased ten-fold between 2011 and 2021. These factors have disturbed elephant movement.”

A Pattern Seen Earlier in the Ranchi Region Too

In Jharkhand, most incidents of human–elephant conflict occur in two major regions, Singhbhum and Ranchi. These are also the areas where Jharkhand’s densest forests once existed, and where mining activity has been the most aggressive.

A similar case was witnessed in the Ranchi region in 2023, when a 12-year-old elephant killed 16 people in 12 days across five districts, including Ranchi. For several days, Section 144 remained imposed in Ranchi’s Itki block, and nights passed under fear.

Now, people in Singhbhum are being forced to live through similar nights.

“A Single Elephant Did All the Killing”

Chaibasa forest division officer Aditya Narayan says that one elephant was responsible for all 22 deaths.

“A single elephant carried out the entire rampage,” he told Outlook. “We still haven’t been able to fully track it. It is very likely that it moved into this region from elsewhere. Since 9 January, there have been no further deaths. But people are still scared because other elephant herds are also moving through the area and causing crop and house damage.”

Narayan added that injured survivors reported unusual elephant behaviour. “They said the elephant’s behaviour had changed—very aggressive. It was moving fast, attacking people on sight. Normally, elephants tend to move away from humans, but this one was coming closer, searching, and attacking.”

At present, forest department teams are patrolling the area, especially where elephant presence is reported. The department believes the elephant may have moved towards Odisha, but officials remain alert. Villagers are being trained on how to deal with elephants. Drone surveillance is being used, and radio collars are being deployed to detect elephant movement.

Corridors Across States and the Hidden Deaths of Elephants

Many districts of the Singhbhum region connect to West Bengal’s Purulia and Odisha’s Sundargarh and Mayurbhanj. Similarly, Ranchi, East Singhbhum, and Seraikela-Kharsawan border West Bengal, while West Singhbhum borders Odisha’s Sundargarh and Mayurbhanj. The Saranda forest belt falls within these regions, and elephants use corridors to move between states.

Across India, around 150 elephant corridors have been identified so far. The highest number—26—are in West Bengal, followed by 17 in Jharkhand and 14 in Odisha.

However, amid reports of human deaths, another reality often remains underreported, which is the unnatural deaths of elephants.

Information obtained through an RTI reveals that between 2009 and 2023, 1,381 elephants died due to unnatural causes across India, ranging from electrocution by live wires to poisoning. In Jharkhand alone, between 2018 and 2025, 100 elephants died unnaturally.