Bhubaneswar: Three persons, including the owner of a mango orchard, have been arrested on charges of killing an elephant and burying its carcass in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district.

The arrested have been identified as Kuber Raj, the owner of the mango orchard, and his two aides—watchman Raju Choudhury and excavator driver Kunu Bhutia.

According to the officials of the Forest Department, the male elephant had strayed into Kuber Raj’s orchard, located in Hindol area of Dhenkanal, to eat ripe mangoes a few days ago.

The elephant was electrocuted after Raj and other employees of the orchard connected the solar fence with high-voltage wire.

They later buried the carcass of the elephant in the mango orchard by using an excavator.

On a tip-off, officials of the Forest Department as well as local police raided the mango orchard on Monday and exhumed the elephant carcass. They also seized the excavator.  

The officials launched a probe into the incident after conducting a postmortem. The three accused persons have confessed to the crime, said Dhenkanal Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Lalit Kumar Patra.     

The authorities, meanwhile, sealed the mango orchard and snapped its electricity connection over the electrocution of the elephant.