For six days, a mother elephant stood guard over the body of her rare pink calf by the banks of Kaptai Lake in Rangamati — a quiet display of grief.
On Sunday afternoon, the calf was finally laid to rest in the Liton’s Tila area of Barunachhari village under Barkal upazila. Forest officials, assisted by locals, buried the body after the mother elephant slowly moved away.
Matiur Rahman, range officer of the Subalong Forest Department, said the decomposing body had begun to spread a foul smell in the area. “The mother elephant stayed close for days and only stepped back a little before the burial,” he said. Samples have been collected for a forensic test to determine the exact cause of death.
The pink calf, believed to be the only one of its kind in Bangladesh, had died on October 20 after slipping from a steep hill and falling into the waters of Kaptai Lake. Forest officials said it drowned after sustaining injuries.
When forest staff first reached the site, they could not recover the body as a herd of wild elephants, including the grieving mother, had swum across the lake and surrounded the calf’s body, keeping people away for nearly a week.
