A one-horned rhino, which strayed out of the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, sparked panic among the residents of a village near Mariani in the Jorhat district of Assam on Wednesday. The locals said that the rhino wandered into the Nakachari Dohatia village early in the day.
After spotting the rhino in a paddy field, the villagers first tried to chase it away. However, when it refused to budge, they informed the nearby forest beat office. When forest officials arrived, they found that it waded into an irrigation canal. Ill-equipped, the forest officials, too, failed to chase away the rhino from the human areas.
Finally, the Kaziranga National Park authorities decided to send a team of veterinary experts from the Assam State Zoo in Guwahati. However, by the time the experts' team, equipped with a tranquillizer gun, from the Guwahati zoo arrived at the spot, it was already dark, forcing them to call off the rescue operation.
A few forest officials have now camped in the area for the night to monitor any movement. Operations to tranquilize the rhino and shift it back to the park would resume on Thursday morning.
On April 13 this year, a father-son duo was seriously injured when they were attacked by an adult rhino near the Kaziranga National Park. The incident took place, when the man and his minor son were crossing the Haldibari animal corridor on National Highway 37 near the national park. According to witnesses, the rhino suddenly came out of the forest and attacked them. The attack by the rhino left the duo grievously injured.
In January 2023, a video of a rhinoceros charging at a safari vehicle carrying tourists in Kaziranga had gone viral. The alarmed tourists could be seen screaming in fear. A month later, a rhinoceros, which had strayed out of the national park, attacked several people, leaving many of them critically injured.
According to the 2022 rhino census, KNP boasts of an estimated 2,613 one-horned rhinoceros, which is the highest in the world.