Mild panic prevailed at the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park (IGZP) in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh as an elephant refused to follow the instructions of its handler and ran amok within its enclosure on Sunday.
According to reports, officials had a hard time pacifying the animal and bringing it under control.
The elephant, Krishna, was being guided around its enclosure without a chain, as per regular practice, as it was taken for a walk. However, instead of listening to the commands of its handler, it began moving erratically inside the compound, reports stated.
Zoo officials then brought out sugarcane to feed and calm the elephant down, before it was chained again.
Speaking to the media, zoo curator Yesoda Bai said that there was no reason to worry as elephants sometimes wanted to get away from the noise made by visitors and be left alone.
She added that the enclosure was trenched and would not allow the elephant to escape.
The zoo park is located within the Kambalakonda Reserve Forest in the Eastern Ghats and was declared open to the public in 1977.
Built in an area spread across 620 acres, the zoo is known for housing a variety of species of birds and animals - both native Indian species like elephants, tigers and crocodiles and foreign, like coloured parrots from Australia.
As part of its exchange programmes in 2019, the zoo park managed to procure several rare species. This includes a sarus crane, an Indian grey wolf, asiatic lions and zebras.
Read: