It’s been one of those weeks in India when it comes to wild animals rampaging through populated areas and inflicting damage.
On Sunday, it was a 6-year-old leopard that mauled three people. On Wednesday, a large elephant rumbled through a neighborhood in a town in West Bengal state.
The elephant knocked over walls of small shacks and trampled motorbikes while it lumbered through the streets of Siliguri as hundreds of residents followed.
“We are assessing the damage. (The elephant) caused a lot of commotion. But now it has been contained,” said local administrator Anurag Srivastava. There were no reports of any human deaths.
It took four tranquilizer darts but eventually the elephant was knocked out.
Officials lifted the beast with a crane and a harness and returned it to the forest.
It was unclear if the animal was male or female.
While leopard attacks seem to get more media attention, wild elephants kill many more people in India than big cats, according to a government website. There were about 27,000 elephants in India when the most recent estimation was done in 2008. The World Wide Fund For Nature says between 100 and 300 people are killed each year by elephants in India.