M
adhu Tati, 75, shudders as he remembers the morning of January 9, 2026 when he couldn’t bear to see the decapitated body of his son. Prakash, who used to operate heavy machinery and earn ₹15,000 a month, in Benisagar village in Majhgaon block of West Singhbhum district, Jharkhand, was killed by an elephant.
Madhu recalls the morning being cold. Most of the family was asleep. “Prakash was recovering from jaundice,” he says. “Every day, we would give him a glass of milk. When we put the vessel of milk on the chulha (earthen stove), we heard some people screaming. They were saying an elephant had entered the village.”
Prakash stepped outside to see what the commotion was about, promising to drink the milk once he returned. An hour went by, but there was still no sign of him. “A villager then came home. He told me that my son had been killed by a mad elephant,” says Madhu.
Madhu’s wife, 70-year-old Kuni Devi, says if her son had only waited for the milk to boil, he would have been alive. “Our world is shattered,” she says. Speaking of her son’s support, she adds, “He was planning to do construction work on the house, which has been pending for two years.”
