Sinharaja elephant kills man in Rakwana

A father of five has been killed in a jungle in the Mannikkawatte Rakwana area by an elephant roaming in the Sinharaja forest area.

Police said that this   individual had been attacked on April 4 night and had died on the spot. The deceased is Gamage Sirisena.

It has been revealed during investigations by the police that the person who died in the wild elephant attack had plucked tea leaves on a land belonging to him and returned home with the plucked tea leaves on Tuesday evening and then gone back to the tea estate. A son-in-law of the deceased person had been on his way to this estate yesterday (5) morning when he had seen the body lying in a jungle patch. One leg of the deceased which had been severed from his body during the wild elephant attack was found about ten feet away from the corpse and it was apparent that the throat of the individual had been severely damaged in the attack as well. Officers of the Pothupitiya wildlife office had arrived at the scene and carried out investigations.

Several persons had seen one of the two elephants from Sinharaja on the Kalawana-Rakwana Road that evening in the Mannikkawatte area. Area residents said that this elephant had been seen in a jungle close to Mannikkawatte yesterday afternoon. One elephant had been seen in the border villages of Sinharaja near the Neluwa area for about a week and was chased back into the Sinharaja forest by villagers a fortnight ago.

There was suspicion that the final two elephants living in Sinharaja had been injured since they had not been seen during the past few months. Several people had been killed from time to time due to being attacked by these wild elephants, in Rakwana, Pothupitiya, and Rambuka areas.