The wild rogue elephant that killed five people in Goalpara in Assam, earning it the nickname 'Laden', died in captivity in the early hours of Sunday.
The elephant named after the late Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden by terrified villagers, was tranquilised and captured from Rongjuli forest division in Goalpara district on November 11, after a massive hunt. The forest department had shifted the animal to Orang National Park the next day.
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The 35-year-old elephant was renamed 'Krishna' after capture.
"The animal was doing fine but the keepers have reported that it died around 5.30am today," said a senior official at the Orang National Park.
The cause of death is not known yet. The Assam government has sent a team of expert veterinarians to carry out a postmortem on the dead elephant to ascertain the cause.
Though the forest department had planned to release the pachyderm in the wild, it later decided to keep it in captivity owing to public protests as people were afraid that it would attack human settlements again.
But activists had objected to the relatively old elephant being kept in captivity.
The elephant-human conflict, mainly because of shrinking natural habitats, has resulted in the deaths of around 2,300 people over the last five years, and around 700 elephants since 2011.
