Guard shot dead as jumbo chase in Buxa goes awry

JALPAIGURI: A forest guard fell to a colleague's bullet during a mission to drive back a herd of elephants in the Buxa Tiger Reserve late on Thursday, leaving his shocked bosses and co-workers struggling to find an explanation for the bizarre death.
As the forest department filed a general diary with the police, the guard's family hinted at foul play, asking how a bullet fired in the air - as is the norm in such missions - could hit a person.The bullet hit Ratan Kumar Dey, 52, from behind and passed through his chest.
The department isn't sure which of its guards fired the bullet that killed Dey. Sources said officials were baffled as the foresters' DBBL guns use bullets that are unlikely to cause a person's death unless fired from very close range.
Dey was part of a group of five guards from the Hamiltonganj squad that was sent to Dalsinghpara forest around 11pm to drive an elephant herd that had entered a village in Dalsighpara tea estate back into the woods.
On spotting the herd, the guards fired in the air. It had the desired effect as the elephants slowed down and started moving away. The guards then started threw crackers at the herd to drive it deep into the forest. This is where the mission went horribly wrong.
Irritated by the noisy crackers, the elephants turned back and ran straight at the guards and some villagers. It triggered a mad scramble as the guards broke formation and ran for their lives, firing in hope that it would divert the elephants. It was then that Dey slumped to the ground. The other guards thought he had stumbled and went to his aid, but were horrified to find a bullet hole in his chest. He died on the spot.
"We are in complete darkness as to how this happened," Hamiltonganj ranger Madhu Milan Ghosh said. "It is common practice to fire in the air to drive away elephants and never have I come across any such incident. We are trying to find out which of our staff actually opened fire at the time the bullet hit Dey."
Dey's brother Dolon demanded an impartial probe. "I've never heard of any forester dying from a bullet fired by his colleague while drive away elephants. If the bullet was fired in the air, how did it hit my brother?" he asked.
Some foresters feel the bullet that killed Dey was fired when the guards were fleeing the herd. "Since they were running, they could not aim properly. That could have led to the bizarre death," a senior forester said.
Arunangshu Mukherjee, a leader of the CPM-affiliated forest union, blamed inadequate infrastructure for the circumstances that led to Dey's death and demanded the creation of dedicated wildlife squads as well as filling up of vacancies in the department to improve the logistics of such missions.