14 DAY TRIAL // A male elephant living in the Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal recently got hit by a passenger train and died on the spot.
Information shared with the public says that the incident occurred on March 5 and that, according to preliminary investigations, nobody can be held responsible for the animal's tragic death.
This is because, as eyewitnesses report and evidence suggests, the elephant merely decided to cross the railway yet forgot to keep an eye out open for danger.
According to Daily Mail, the people in charge of operating the passenger train involved in this accident did not manage to hit the brakes in time, and ended up colliding into the animal.
The same source informs us that the Buxa Tiger Reserve where this elephant was killed is actually part and parcel of a so-called migratory corridor which allows these animals to travel from India to Bhutan and then back again.
Because of this, some conservationists might argue that having railways crisscross these lands is not in the least a good idea, given the fact that such accidents can happen at any time.
In fact, it appears that this was not the first time when an elephant in West Bengal passed away as a result of its having been hit by a speeding train.
Quite the contrary: it was back in last year's December that five other elephants passed away under fairly similar circumstances. Long story short, they got hit by a train traveling across the Indian state of Orissa.
High officials in India maintain that, in the aftermath of several such accidents, they asked the people in charge of running these trains to slow down when crisscrossing portions of land known to be inhabited by elephants.
However, it appears that most of them are anything but willing to give this piece of advice the attention it deserves.