Shoot Bin Laden before 31 Dec

The Assam government has issued a death warrant against Osama bin Laden for terrorising poor villagers of Assam....

The execution, a one-shot death, is slated for December 31 and two qualified hitmen have been hired.

Osama bin Laden is not the elusive and dreaded Al-Qaida chief, but a rogue wild Asiatic elephant that killed about a dozen people in the past year.

The order comes after the bull was blamed for the killing of a woman on Wednesday close to the Behali Reserve Forest, a thickly wooden evergreen jungle where Laden lives.

Things came to such a pass that the government had to cancel leave of forest department officials. Village-level volunteers, who work in tandem with the forest department, have been pressed into service to end the growing man-elephant conflicts in the state.

A wildlife official said the 10-feet tall male tusk-less elephant was proclaimed a rogue in July after the beast killed about 14 people in the past one year in Sonitpur district, 230 km from here.

"We have hired a licensed hunter to kill the rogue elephant, although Laden had so far remained elusive. The hunter, accompanied by about five rangers, is still in the jungles trying to track down Laden," Chandan Bora, a wildlife warden, told IANS by telephone.

The hunter has been given time to kill the animal by Dec 31.

But it will not be easy for the hunter. The elusive bull has twice before evaded attempts to kill him.

"Two days back, Laden killed a woman close to a reserved forest area. The animal is very clever and managed to evade the hunter engaged by us to kill Laden," the warden said.

“I am looking for my target with a .400 bore rifle assisted by five forestry officials, but Laden is known to do the vanishing trick every time a hunter is put on its trail,” said Dipen Phukan, one of Assam’s three licensed elephant hunters.

This is the third time in the past two years that 'Laden' was declared rogue and ordered to be killed.

"In Assam, depredation by wild elephants is common and locals often name such rogue animals as Laden because of his terror strikes," another wildlife ranger said.

The last time an elephant declared a rogue and later killed by licensed hunter was in 2004.

During the past fortnight, herds of wild elephants have been wreaking havoc in several parts of Assam, especially in villages where tribal people brew large volumes of rice beer.

Experts say wild elephants have been moving out of the jungles in search of food with people encroaching upon animal corridors leading to an increasing number of elephant attacks on villages.

Elephants have killed 248 people in Assam in the past five years while 268 elephants have died during the same period, many of them victims of retaliation by angry humans, said a wildlife department report released last month said.

Villagers often poison the marauding elephants while in the past they drove them away by beating drums or bursting firecrackers.

Assam has India's largest population of Asiatic elephants, estimated at around 5,300, according to a wildlife census in 2002.

this is sad... first you encroach on the territory that rightfully belongs to those elephants and then when they go out of their territory they are termed as rogue ... sheeesh..
This is such a shame!

what can you do ? when this is there

yes.. but they wouldnt turn rogue if their habitat wasnt disturbed in the first place..why would they attack human beings when they would have enough food to eat in their own habitat...

Did Moddess Rogue use her Powers to delete the posts in this thread....

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knoughtyd's Signature:

Attacking humans isn't about food... it is about habitat to some extent. But these people have lived there for years too. Sometimes old elephants do turn violent. They have to be killed then. It is OK. Read up on Jim Corbett's work.

yes i know about that. ... but ultimately..whose fault was it? its a viscious cycle in which the animals are the ones who are always affected..

"Rogue" Elephant shot dead in Assam

‘Osama bin Laden’,a rogue wild Asiatic elephant that was wreaking havoc in Assam, was Saturday morning shot dead on state orders.

Laden, a rogue elephant named after the Al Qaida chief for terrorising and killing several people in Sonitpur district on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, had a death warrant against him.

A wildlife official said the 10-feet tall male tusk-less elephant was killed by a hunter at the Behali tea plantation in Sonitpur district, 240 km north of Assam's main city of Guwahati.Though chief wildlife warden M C Malakar had ordered that the 10-foot tall tusker be killed with a single shot, hunter Dwipen Ram Phukan had to fire 10 bullets to bring it down inside at Bihali tea estate in Gohpur.'Licensed hunter Dipen Ram Phukan and a team of forest rangers shot dead Laden as the elephant was moving around aimlessly and trying to enter a human settlement area,' wildlife warden Chandan Bora told.Local villagers identified the elephant as Laden and our team verified the identity before shooting,' he added.

“From December 3 to 13, the elephant killed three persons in Borgaang. He was a loner. Wild herds normally destroy crops, but he was a fearless killer. Bursting of crackers, drumbeats and blank fires would not scare him. He would charge at people,’’ said ranger Arup Kalita.

In Assam, depredation by wild elephants is common. The last time an elephant was declared a rogue and killed by a licensed hunter was in 2004. During the past fortnight, herds of wild elephants have been terrorising several parts of Assam, especially in villages where tribals brew rice beer.

Experts say wild elephants have been moving out of the jungles in search of food with more and more people encroaching upon animal corridors, leading to an increasing number of elephant attacks on villages.

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knoughtyd's Signature:

heh.... rofl