On Monday, a woman died in a tragic accident on the Cauvery River. The accident occurred at the Dubare Elephant Camp in Kodagu district during an elephant bathing session.
The deceased is a tourist named Junesh (33), a Chennai-born woman. According to the report, two elephants were engaged in a confrontation after they bathed in the camp.
While mahouts bathed elephants in the Cauvery River, one of the most famous attractions in this popular tourist destination, it has been reported that visitors were near the riverbank. It was reported that at the session, one of the elephants, named Kanjan, attacked another elephant, named Marthanda. “It was really chaotic very quickly,” officials said when Kanjan allegedly pushed or struck Marthanda.
During all of this, one of the elephants lost its balance and fell on the tourist woman nearby. Junesh was caught by the elephant and injured severely enough that it stunned the locals and everyone else, too! Rescue was in vain, as staff and local authorities tried immediately to save her; she had already been pronounced dead.
Tourists and camp staff panicked over the horrific event. While mahouts fumbled to control the elephants, at least some of the visitors reportedly withdrew from the scene. Police and forest department officers showed up at the site and began the investigation.
The exact sequence of the event, though, and the degree to which safety precautions were observed when public elephant bathing took place, is an ongoing investigation by authorities. Dubare Elephant Camp is one of the most visited eco-tourism spots in Karnataka, with thousands of visitors annually.
Tourists partake in elephant feedings, bathing sessions, and animal encounters along the river. But the tragic accident has also once again brought the safety of tourists, in proximity to wild and trained elephants, under fire. And even trained elephants can be unpredictable, wildlife experts say, especially in those situations where many animals gather in a small or crowded space.
Officials thus ought to look at existing camp safety policies in order to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again. Crowd control plans and the safety of tourists and elephants during bathing sessions have also been raised. Authorities said the body is reportedly being transferred for postmortem examination, and the family of the victim in Chennai has been informed.
Additional legal steps have been taken. So, potentially, the forest department could try to arrange for a full behavioural assessment of the elephants that led to the sudden confrontation between the elephants. The death of a tourist did, however, devastate many people, but also people expressed condolences over the family members of the victim and called for more stringent safety measures to be introduced for wildlife tourism centres.
