He is not a toll agent but a tusker that has got detached from its herd and stands for hours along the road waiting for food-laden trucks to give him its daily fill.
No food-laden vehicle can cross the Haatgamria-Baraiburu road in Jharkhand without giving Ramu Haathi his fill
CHAIBASA (Jharkhand): No trucker plying on the Haatgamria-Baraiburu road can escape giving him toll tax.
He is not a toll agent but a tusker that has got detached from its herd and stands for hours along the road waiting for food-laden trucks to give him its daily fill.
“We don’t mind giving it a bunch of fruits or rice or other eatables. This is his toll tax,” a trucker on the road says.
The tusker, fondly called Ramu Haathi, is not always friendly, though. When it cannot spot a food-laden truck the whole day, it raids road-side hotels.
Assistant conservator of forest Arvind Kumar says the elephant was detached from a herd several months ago and took shelter in the Saranda forest 50 km from here.
Normally, a detached tusker becomes violent and attacks human habitats, but Ramu is an exception. It has jelled so well with the villagers that they take care of it, Kumar, posted in West Singhbhum district, says.
Occasionally, elephant herds are compelled by human encroachment to emerge from forests to look for food. They follow a particular route. When people erect barriers on their route to prevent them from attacking villages and crops, they become violent, Kumar explains.
Wild elephants killed 168 people in Jharkhand between 2005 and 2007, the highest in the eastern region, but Ramu is an exception. Villagers blame the forest department for elephant straying.
“The forest department would provide us crackers and worn-out tyres to check stray elephants, but they stopped the practice last year,” claims a member of Manki Munda Sangh, a tribal body.
Kumar, however, denies the charge, saying the forest department had given the villagers all the necessary protection.
Not only food, local brews such as mahua and haria also attract tuskers to villages. “Once they get an intoxicating smell, elephants never leave the place without tasting it,” he says.
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