Elephants on drunken rampage kill three people

Binge-drinking elephants, drunk on local hooch, have killed three people and destroyed 60 homes in a four-day rampage in east India.

Yesterday they were reported by local officials to be sleeping off hangovers as shocked communities tried to clear the wreckage left by the 70-strong herd in remote villages on the borders of the states of Orissa and West Bengal.

With a local festival approaching, villagers had stockpiled the fermented-rice based drink which is stored in earthenware vessels and, according to Bijay Kumar Panda, a local administrator, the elephants found and drank it.

They then staggered through the surrounding area and began "to fall asleep hither and thither, throwing life completely haywire".

According to the Pioneer newspaper, the "jumbos" are known "for their love of local country-made brews" which they "gulp down and make merry at the expense of the villagers".

Elephant experts say such incidents are becoming more common. With pristine forest increasingly rare, especially in the area where this latest incident occurred, Indian elephants no longer avoid contact with humans, said Dr Amirtharaj Williams, Asian rhino and elephant programme co-ordinator for the World Wildlife Fund. "These herds are effectively semi-urbanised. There are elephants who are getting a taste for food that humans prepare because it is tastier, stronger-smelling and often more nutritious and that includes rice- or molasses-based drinks. Some go looking for it."

Around 400 people are killed each year by elephants in India and nearly a million hectares of farmland damaged.

Around 100 elephants are killed by villagers each year.

India's booming population and economic growth have placed the historic grazing lands of elephants under enormous pressure. To avoid exhausting fodder in one area, the herds migrate. Attempts to create safe corridors for the animals' travel have foundered on bureaucratic sloth and lack of enforcement.

In September seven elephants were killed by a speeding goods train.

Latest estimates put India's elephant population at around 21,000 – the largest in Asia. About half of these are found in north-eastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.