Elephant tramples woman to death then turns up at funeral and attacks her corpse

Simon Bland

The wild animal returned a few hours later

In a bizarre turn of events, an elephant not only trampled a woman to death but if reports are to be believed, it returned a few hours later to attack the same person again during her funeral.

According to local reports, 70-year-old Maya Murmu was innocently collecting water from a tubewell in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district in Eastern India on the morning of Thursday June 9.

As per police reports – covered in India’s edition of The Print and other outlets including the New York Post – Murmu was attacked and subsequently killed by a wild elephant that had reportedly strayed from the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary which is located in a neighbouring state.

The attack saw the elephant trample Murmu, who was taken to a local hospital but unfortunately died of her injuries shortly after the incident took place, as relayed by Rasgovindpur policeman Lopamudra Nayak.

However this shocking story sadly doesn’t end here.

Later that evening, when family members were laying the woman to rest and performing her last rites, eye witnesses claim that the same elephant reportedly returned, taking the corpse from the wooden pyre and continuing to re-trample her dead body before throwing it up into the air and running away.

Thankfully, those in attendance were allegedly able to recover the woman’s body and complete the funeral process shortly afterwards.

This isn’t the only story of extreme animal behaviour that has been reported in recent weeks. Just a few days ago, we brought you news of a caged orangutan in an Indonesian zoo that almost broke a man’s leg after it grabbed him from inside its inclosure.

However unlike the unfortunate incident of the woman and the elephant, it is believed that this encounter could very well have been avoided.

According to reports, the man climbed over a perimeter fence in order to get closer to the animal and if the zoo’s manager is to be believed, he may have even attempted to strike the animal in his panic at being snared.

The clip soon went viral online – a warning to all about the raw power of nature and the respect it commands.