A 35-year-old man became the latest victim of a deadly elephant spree in Chhattisgarh’s Balrampur district on Thursday, marking the fourth fatality in just four days.

Mahendra Gond was trampled to death in Ghaghra village under Pasta police station limits while checking crops with three fellow villagers, police reported. The elephant seized Gond with its trunk and crushed him, though his companions escaped after spotting the beast in time.

Forest and police teams rushed to the scene, recovering Gond’s body for a post-mortem. His family, from nearby Kochli village, received an immediate Rs 25,000 relief payment, with Rs 5.75 lakh more to follow pending formalities, forest officials confirmed.

The attack follows a grim pattern: on Monday, two people died and one was injured in separate incidents in Ramanujganj, while a woman was killed Wednesday in Shankargarh—all in Balrampur.

Two rogue tuskers, straying from Jharkhand, are behind the chaos, officials say. Forest teams are tracking the elephants and warning locals, but the animals continue to wreak havoc.

Human-elephant conflicts, once confined to northern Chhattisgarh districts like Surguja and Raigarh, have spread to central areas over the past few years, with Balrampur, Korba, and Mahasamund among the hardest hit. Forest data reveals a staggering toll: nearly 320 deaths from elephant attacks statewide in the last five years.