Kerala: Parents block road as jumbo scare spreads

Kalpetta: The roaming herds of pachyderms have spread fear in the panchayats bordering the jungle in Wayanad district where an elephant killed a farm labourer at Chulliode, a border town,  on Sunday.   The tales of sighting elephant herds started spreading in the region from the wee hours of Tuesday and parents went to school to bring the children back. There were unconfirmed reports that elephant herds were spotted at three locations. In  several schools at  Koliyadi, Anappara and Ambalavayal, the education department advised the headmasters to keep vigil.

The students and parents also laid a siege to the Sulthan Bathery-Ooty inter-state highway for more than an hour in the morning. Sulthan Bathery block panchayat president Suresh Thaloor told DC that the killing of the farm-worker had spread a fear-wave in the region. “I never heard of such an incident during the last fifty years,”  he said and  added that with this one killing, the  majority areas of Sulthan Bathery taluk were under threat of elephant attack. Now people were scared to step out in the morning.  “Milkmen and newspaper men are  afraid to do their work as it is tough to identify the presence of elephants  in the early hours,”  he noted.