Elephant herds trample crops, breach school walls in Chhattisgarh's Korba and Jashpur

A large herd of wild elephants moved through villages in Chhattisgarh's Korba district over the weekend of October 11, 2026, trampling standing crops, according to local newspapers Aaj Tak and Amar Ujala. The herd had also breached the boundary wall of a mission school hostel in the area a few days earlier, Amar Ujala reported. In a separate incident the same weekend, a lone tusker elephant entered Jashpur town, damaging walls at a hospital, a college and a church.

What happened in Korba

Amar Ujala reported that a herd of 52 elephants moved between the Pasan area of Korba district and the Katghora forest division, entering Teliyamar village in the Pasan range. Aaj Tak put the herd's size at 53. According to Amar Ujala, elephants broke through the boundary wall of the Deepak Mission School hostel in Teliyamar about three days before the weekend's reporting. The school sent the hostel's children home as a safety precaution after the wall was breached, the outlet reported.

Standing rice (paddy) crops in fields adjacent to the school were trampled, and at least one farmer's house was damaged, Amar Ujala said. The herd also moved toward the Pendra forest range in neighbouring Gaurela-Pendra-Marwahi district as it continued through the region, the outlet added.

Villagers sleeping on rooftops

Residents in the affected villages have been staying awake through the night to guard their homes and fields, according to Amar Ujala. One farmer, identified as Khelen Singh, moved his bed onto his roof as a precaution. Villagers held a meeting at the Pasan police station to demand more frequent surveillance updates and faster warnings from forest officials about the herd's location, the outlet reported.

Tusker enters Jashpur town

In Jashpur district, a tusker elephant that had separated from its group entered Kunakuri town, according to Aaj Tak. The animal damaged boundary walls at three locations: Holy Cross Mission Hospital, Loyola College and a church, the outlet reported.

Casualties and official response

Both Aaj Tak and Amar Ujala reported no deaths or injuries from the weekend's incidents. Korba's Divisional Forest Officer, Jitendra Shukla, told Aaj Tak that forest teams were using an elephant-tracking app to monitor the herd's movements and to try to direct the animals toward safe, less populated areas. Officials asked residents to keep their distance from the elephants and to follow forest department instructions, according to the report.

In Korba, the forest department has committed to surveying crop damage and providing compensation to affected farmers, Amar Ujala reported. Advisories issued to villagers also warned against leaving children unattended near forest edges.

Background: a growing elephant population in Chhattisgarh

Human-elephant conflict has become more frequent in Korba and nearby districts in recent years. A national elephant count released in 2025 — the Synchronous All India Elephant Estimation, which used DNA-based mark-recapture methods for the first time — recorded 451 elephants in Chhattisgarh, according to the environmental outlet Down To Earth. The outlet said this DNA-based count should be treated as a new monitoring baseline rather than a figure directly comparable to earlier estimates, without giving a specific historical comparison number for the state.

Down To Earth's report on the national census said elephants in the central Indian and eastern landscape, which includes Chhattisgarh, have increasingly moved into historical range areas that are currently unoccupied, a trend the report linked to "escalating conflicts with humans" amid habitat fragmentation from mining and infrastructure.