A 58-year-old man was trampled to death by eight elephants near Thalawadi in Erode district on the early hours of Wednesday.
The deceased was identified as C Nagarajappa, 58, of Panahalli near Thalawadi. He owned three acres of land in the village. Every night he would go to his field to drive away animals that entered to eat his crop.
Around 2am on Thursday, a herd of eight elephants entered the land. Nagarajappa was sleeping in the field. When the noise woke him up, he got up to chase them away. This infuriated the elephants and they surrounded him and attacked him.
Villagers heard him scream and ran towards the field with firecrackers. The elephants threw Nagarajappa and moved away from the land.
The villagers rushed the victim to Samrajnagar in Karnataka. But, he died just after reaching the hospital. Doctors said he had received grave injuries on his chest and back bone areas.
Police and forest officials from Thalawadi initiated investigation based on the information.
A case was registered and forest officials issued a solatium of 25,000 to the kin of the deceased on Wednesday.