South Asia’s Notorious Elephant Dhurbe Linked to 25 Deaths in Nepal After Latest Attack

For years, a single wild elephant has shaped fear, folklore, and policy debates in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park.

Dhurbe: a single wild elephant, 25 lost lives, and an endless tragedy. For anyone living along the buffer zones of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, the mere mention of this name is enough to make the heart tremble. On the night of July 4, that terror returned with devastating force, tearing yet another family apart and shattering a fragile nine-year peace.

To some, this solitary bull is a dangerous, vengeful “rogue” animal. To others, he is a tragic symbol of a deepening, bloody conflict between expanding human settlements and shrinking wildlife habitats in Nepal’s southern plains. But to understand the sheer weight of his legacy, one must look back to where the story of South Asia’s most notorious elephant truly began.

The Origin of Terror: From ‘Makuna’ to Outlaw

Originally, Dhurbe was just a normal native tuskless male elephant, known locally as a makuna. His transition from a wild resident to an outlaw began in 2009 after he killed a Nepal Army soldier named Dhurbe. Following that incident, the elephant was branded with the fallen soldier’s name—a name that would soon become synonymous with terror across the region.

Between 2009 and 2012, Dhurbe’s aggression escalated dramatically. He became a living nightmare for the villages surrounding the park, particularly in the Madi area. Sneaking into settlements under the cover of darkness, he destroyed more than 50 homes and claimed the lives of over 15 people. Villagers lived in constant terror, unable to sleep through the night. The crisis grew so severe that the government officially declared the elephant “mad” and issued a rare, controversial order to terminate him.

Surviving the Army’s Bullets

In December 2012, an extraordinary manhunt was launched. A heavily equipped force of more than 90 army personnel, park officials, and wildlife technicians tracked Dhurbe into the deep jungle. Gunfire erupted, and Dhurbe was hit and severely wounded.

Yet, against all odds, the resilient bull survived. Bleeding and battered, he slipped across the international border into the forests of India. As the years passed with no sign of him, authorities and locals assumed Dhurbe had succumbed to his bullet wounds. He became a ghost, slipping into local folklore.

The Return and the Attempts to Tame a Beast

Five years later, in 2017, the ghost returned. Dhurbe crossed back into Nepal and immediately struck again, killing a Nepal Army major in a rare and alarming encounter.

Following that high-profile attack, wildlife authorities shifted strategies from eradication to intense management. Technicians captured and tranquilized him, fitting him with a satellite-tracking radio collar. To minimize his capacity for fatal violence, his tusks were trimmed, and he was administered specialized medication to suppress musth—the hormonal condition that triggers extreme aggression in male elephants.

For nine long years, the interventions seemed to work. Dhurbe remained largely peaceful inside the Sukhibhar area of the park, avoiding fatal encounters. People began to believe that the notorious elephant had finally changed, grown old, and grown calm.

The Dark Night of July 4: The 25th Victim

But the wild instincts and deeply rooted trauma of an animal do not simply disappear. On the quiet midnight of Asar 20, Dhurbe suddenly breached the Belhatta squatter settlement in Bharatpur Metropolitan City-23.

Inside a modest hut built of mud and bamboo, 24-year-old Ashika Bote and her 4-year-old son, Bharat, were fast asleep. It took very little effort for the massive, aggressive bull to tear down the structure.

Inside, Purna Bote was forced to watch a living nightmare unfold. As the elephant violently dragged and trampled his wife and youngest son right before his eyes, Purna made a desperate, agonizing decision. Realizing that eight family members sleeping in the same room were about to be slaughtered, Purna frantically grabbed his 6-year-old daughter, Sirisa, and set fire to his own home’s straw roofing to drive the beast away.

The raging flames successfully scared Dhurbe back into the forest, but by then, Purna’s world was entirely reduced to ash. On one side lay the mutilated bodies of his wife and son; on the other, the charred ruins of his home. Neighboring residents recall Ashika as the backbone of the impoverished household, carrying the weight of the family alongside her gentle husband and elderly in-laws. Young Bharat, who had just begun learning his alphabet at the local Kadam Basic School, had his bright future snuffed out in an instant.

A Legacy of Generational Trauma

For the Bote family, Dhurbe is a recurring generational curse. Exactly 14 years ago, on December 15, 2012, this very same elephant brutally killed Purna’s 71-year-old grandfather, Somla Bote, and his 68-year-old grandmother, Jharali Bote, in Madi. Following that tragedy, Purna’s terrified parents fled their ancestral land and migrated to Jagatpur purely to escape the elephant’s wrath. In a cruel twist of fate, the tragedy tracked them down more than a decade later to claim the second generation of their family.

With these latest killings, Dhurbe’s confirmed death toll has reached a grim milestone of 25 innocent lives.

While the community’s outrage is entirely justified—as the pain of losing a family can never be put into words—conservationists point to a deeper, systemic tragedy. Dhurbe’s story reflects the severe consequences of human encroachment. Humans have systematically seized the jungles elephants rely on and built permanent concrete settlements directly over their ancient migratory corridors. When the army shot and wounded Dhurbe over a decade ago, it likely instilled a profound, lifelong fear and vengeful retaliation toward humans.

Dhurbe has once again vanished into the Sukhibhar bushes of Chitwan National Park. Purna Bote managed to save his young daughter from the carnage, but the village is left wondering how he will survive the days ahead, staring at the ashes of his home and an empty, broken life. It remains a tragedy where human safety and wildlife survival are locked in a devastating, unresolved war.