Ahmedabad: When a middle-aged, cheerful Gujarati couple decided to go on a trekking expedition in Kerala on January 17, little did they realise that they had driven a nail in their coffins.Indeed, even when Ahmedabad-based Bhupendra Raval (52) and his wife Jagruti, were happily clicking pictures of a rare herd of elephants while on a trekking trail in the Periyar Tiger Reserve on Wednesday afternoon, the ecstatic couple did not have an inkling that death was staring them in the face.
Provoked by the flash of their camera, one of the pachyderms in the cardamom plantation ran amok, charging at them and trampling the duo to death even as their guide ran for his life. While the husband was beaten to death by the trunk, the wife was stomped over by the irate elephant.
A Gujarat forest department official told Khaleej Times that elephants turned violent when they were in musth, a periodic state of heightened sexual activity and aggression in adult male elephants during the rutting season.
The Ravals, who were killed on the spot, were part of a group of eight that were on a two-hour trekking expedition organised by the state forest department in Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala.