PILIBHIT: Residents of two villages situated on the Indo-Nepal border – Dhakia Talluke Mahrajpur and Gorakhdibbi under Kalinagar tehsil of UP's Pilibhit district – are both tense and angry.They have just faced a volley of back-to-back “surgical strikes” in the past fortnight which have left their ripe crop of rice and sugarcane in over 15 acres here completely ravaged. The enemy from the other side of the border had crossed over and left a trail of destruction here last year too. Indian authorities plan to take the issue at the meeting of Indo-Nepal coordination committee to be held in first week of October.But there is little officials from the two sides can do to stop a bunch of unruly, marauding elephants for the cross-border excesses.Radhe Rana, a marginal farmer here who is also an elected member of Dhakia Talluke Mahrajpur village panchayat, told TOI, “Our villages, which are barely 2.5 km from the Indo-Nepal border, are targeted by giant-sized Nepalese elephants around the same time for the past two years. They tread on our standing crop and destroy more than what they consume. We are poor farmers and we won’t have enough to even eat if the government doesn’t come to our help.”According to the locals, the cross-border pachyderms retire into Lagga-Bagga area of Pilibhit tiger reserve by the night and come back to villages during the day time. Dulwant Rana, another farmer here, alleged that their repeated complaints to forest officials have fallen on deaf ears. “One forest inspector had visited us once and given us six fireworks to scare the pachyderms away. That is all,” Rana said.H Rajamohan, PTR field director, said that he had tried to visit the affected villages but could not reach there due to floods. “I will issue instructions for round-theclock presence of a forest team in the affected villages to protect the area from pachyderms,” Rajamohan said.“Besides, I will discuss this problem with Nepalese forest officials at the Indo-Nepal coordination committee meeting to explore definite preventive measures against pachyderms’ barging in Indian territory,” the field director said.Kalinagar sub-divisional magistrate Pushpa Devrar said she would immediately depute a team of revenue and forest officials to assess the damage, so that it can be referred to the state administration for suitable compensation.

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