A HERD of elephants drunk on rice beer has trampled three people to death, including a four-year-old boy, on a rampage through a village in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.

Residents of Teok Kathoni tried to scare them off using drums and firecrackers, but the elephants consumed the remote village’s stocks of rice beer, then charged through huts, killing the boy and injuring his eight-year-old brother.

It was the latest in a string of incidents over the past fortnight, which wildlife experts have attributed to human encroachment on the elephant’s natural habitat in the region. Assam has India’s biggest population of elephants, estimated at 5,300. Until recently, they lived in relative seclusion in the dense forest that covers much of the region near India’s borders with Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan and China.

But as those forests have shrunk, the elephants have strayed into villages, destroying crops, raiding granaries and attacking humans. They also appear to have developed a taste for the potent rice beer that villagers brew and store in their homes.

In retaliation, villagers have often killed elephants by electrocuting them, shooting them with poison-tipped arrows or leaving out poisoned food spikes. In the past five years elephants have killed 239 people in Assam, while 265 elephants have died.

Wildlife experts have blamed the conflict on an influx of settlers from neighbouring regions over the past five years. The settlers are estimated to inhabit up to 44,480 acres of land illegally in ten national parks and game sanctuaries.

“The elephants don’t have a home and their food supplies have dropped, so they go into the paddies and villages in search of food,” said Ravi Singh, of WWF India.

“They have a sharp sense of smell, so they are attracted by the pungency of the rice beer. It’s not the alcohol, it’s the smell from the fermentation process that attracts them.”

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