Rampaging Elephant Disrupts Historic Varanasi Ramlila Before Being Subdued

An elephant brought from Azamgarh for the historic two-century-old Ramlila in Varanasi turned violent on Sunday morning, injuring its mahout and forcing the day's Ram-Ravavn battle performance to be postponed. The incident occurred at Panchvati Maidan around 10:30 AM when mahout Chapalu was feeding three elephants, causing the animal to break loose, smash boundary walls and shops, uproot several trees, and damage a 33,000-volt high-tension power pole that plunged Ramnagar into a two-hour power outage. When the mahout tried to control the animal, the elephant picked him up with its trunk and threw him down, inflicting severe injuries that required about 50 stitches at the trauma center. Police quickly sealed a two-kilometer area with barricades, while nearly 200 personnel from the police, forest department, and NDRF rushed to the spot, joined later by a specialist team and tranquilizer medication from Gorakhpur zoo after local forest officials lacked darting equipment.

Context

Historic religious events in India often feature traditional animal processions and displays that require careful handling by trained handlers. The two-century-old Varanasi Ramlila is a major annual cultural tradition patronized by the local royal family, drawing large crowds of pilgrims, actors, and visitors from across the country every year.