Raipur, Jun 12 (PTI) The Chhattisgarh government on Friday constituted a committee headed by a retired IFS (Indian Forest Service) officer to probe the recent deaths of three wild elephants in the forests of the state's Surguja division, an official statement said.

State forest minister Mohammad Akbar said that taking serious cognizance of the deaths of the three elephants, a panel headed by retired Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) K C Bevarta has been set up to investigate the casualties.

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The committee will submit its report within a month, he said in a statement.

The committee will have wildlife expert Dr R P Mishra, senior advocate Dr Deva Dewangan and a senior veterinary doctor as its members while Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) as its member secretary, he said.

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The probe will focus on points like reasons of death and prevailing situations, whether there was any negligence and if yes who was responsible, whether it could have been averted. Other points which the committee will consider during the investigation will also be covered.

The panel will also give ideas on how to avoid any such incident in future, the minister said.

"The post-mortem of the pachyderms revealed that one of them died of cardiac arrest, another of toxicity and third one due to infection," he added.

An interaction with officers of Government of India was held through video-conferencing in this connection.

Further action will be taken based on recommendation of the probe committee, minister said.

On June 9, a pregnant elephant was found dead in Pratappur forest range of Surajpur district and thenext day the carcass of another female jumbo was recovered from the same area.

One more fatality was reported from adjoining Rajpur forest range in Balrampur district on June 11.

Forest officials had said that all the three female elephants belonged to the same herd and the cause of deaths were unnatural.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)