Elephant calf barges into hostel room in Odisha

Five students survive an hour of mayhem till elephant rescues the calf

Tribal students had a miraculous escape when a wild elephant rescued a calf that had inadvertently entered their hostel room in Odisha’s Balasore district. Students of the Government High School, Kabataghati, still shiver as they recall what unfolded in the early hours of Thursday.  

The school management was alerted to a herd of elephants roaming near the residential school, which is situated close to a forest, on Wednesday. “We remained vigilant till late in the night in order to alert boarders if elephants approached the school premises. By midnight, when we did not see any wild elephant, we went to sleep. However, wild elephants entered the school premises in the early hours of Thursday,” Chakradhar Das, Headmaster, said.

Though the school was set up about 65 years ago, it does not have a proper boundary wall.

Separated from the herd, a calf walked into a hostel building having six rooms. Finding rooms locked from inside, the calf, about 5.5 ft. tall, kept knocking at the door of one room. It opened and the elephant calf entered. When the door closed accidentally, the calf was stuck in the room where Biswajit Marandi, Sriram Soren, Samay Soren, Sanatan Tudu and Alok Hansdah, all Class X students, were put up.

“There was no power. Still I could see an elephant standing by my bed. Without making any noise, all five of us slipped under one bed. There are seven beds inside the room. The calf started trumpeting in distress,” Mr. Marandi said.

On hearing the calf, an adult elephant started banging on every window of the hostel building.  “It was terrifying. We were trembling,” Mr. Tudu said.

When the adult elephant found the calf, it tried to enter the room through the windows, pulling down two big windows and smashing a third. Heaving a foot through the gap, it cracked the plywood of the cot under which all five students were hiding! Fortunately, the elephant abandoned the idea of entering the room.