The incident happened in the Jalpaiguri district of the state.
The Banarhat-Nagrakata train route passes through a major Elephant corridor often leading to such tragic accidents involving Elephants.
The heart-wrenching video that surfaced on various social media platforms showed the critically injured Elephant trying hard to drag itself out of the railway track, as people watched in helplessness, after being hit by the engine of the intercity express.
The video shows the impact of the injury on the poor animal while people watch helplessly. In 2004, the Dooars line was converted from metre gauge to broad gauge; a move that saw a sharp increase in Elephant deaths.
But despite all the precautionary measures and efforts, such as speed limits and buzzers, trains on the Dooars route have continued to kill Elephants.
In the period between 2013 to June 2019, a total of 67 Elephants were killed in train-related accidents.
Actor Randeep Hooda said in a twitter post “The agony of the Elephant is quite evident in the video, the impact can be gauged by the damage to the engine.
I humbly urge the ministry to drastically reduce speed of trains through this area, humans can easily manage slight delay to keep wildlife safe”
For the sake of the Elephants, let’s hope they listen and reduce the speed of trains through the corridor.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP
Protect All Wildlife are supporting Voice for Asian Elephants Society with their campaign to help stop Elephants from being crushed by speeding trains. They are piloting an early warning system to alert train drivers of Elephants presence, with enough time for the speeding train to stop and the sirens will also warn Elephants.
For the month of July Protect All Wildlife are donating ALL proceeds from sales of items raising awareness to animal welfare. Visit the on-line shop at https://protect-all-wildlife.ecwid.com/
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