The Same Wild Elephant Has Killed Four Members of One Family Over 14 Years
· Vice
A man in Nepal crossed two rivers to escape the elephant that killed his parents. He sold his home, relocated his family, and started over in the Jagatpur region. Fourteen years later, the same elephant broke through the walls of his new house and killed his daughter-in-law and four-year-old grandson.
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The elephant’s name is Dhurbe, and he has his own Wikipedia page. According to Abinash Thapa Magar, information officer at Chitwan National Park, Dhurbe has killed at least 25 people since 2010—making him one of the most documented problem elephants in the world. A satellite tracking collar monitoring his movements confirmed he was positioned directly around the Bote family home the night of the attack.
“We believed that moving across the major rivers would keep us safe,” Shanichara Bote told the Kathmandu Post. “But after all these years, the exact same elephant found us again, raided our home, and took my daughter-in-law and my little grandson. There is nowhere left for us to run.”
Why Does Dhurbe the Elephant Keep Killing People?
Dhurbe’s aggression has a documented explanation. When young male elephants mature, dominant bulls drive them out of their herds and into solitary lives on the fringes of human settlements. Cut off from the herd and foraging where food exists, these males become the animals most likely to end up in fatal contact with people. Dhurbe has followed that path since at least 2009.
The broader situation in Nepal isn’t an anomaly. According to park data, 127 people have died in wildlife attacks in the Chitwan area over the past 11 and a half years. Nepal’s Elephant Conservation Action Plan for 2025 to 2035 found that more than half of the potential elephant habitat in the Chure-Tarai region now falls outside protected areas, which means elephants and people are sharing space that was never meant for it.
After Dhurbe killed Shanichara’s parents in 2012, authorities ordered him hunted down. Ninety-three soldiers were mobilized, the elephant was shot twice, and officials said he’d been wounded—but he was never found. He resurfaced in 2016, got a second tracking collar in 2020 when the first stopped working, and a third in 2023. The system pings his location every hour.
Local residents told the Kathmandu Post that Dhurbe had been circling the settlement for nine to ten days before the attack. “This animal follows a cyclical path and returns to the villages every single year, meaning his presence was entirely predictable to the park authorities,” said Lal Bahadur Dawadi, chairman of the Ghailaghari Buffer Zone Consumer Committee.
Park authorities have pledged to permanently contain Dhurbe and upgrade to real-time tracking. Shanichara’s wife saved the rest of the family by setting fire to dry thatch from their porch—which burned down what was left of their home in the process. Nine people live there. They have nowhere else to go.
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