Second Chance at Life: Sangeetha’s brush with a raging elephant

Minister OJ Janeesh, Thrissur Mayor Nidhi Justin and Rajan Pallan, MLA, at a car that was damaged in an elephant attack in Cherur on Saturday. The woman in the car managed to miraculously escape. | Photo credit: KK NAJEEB

It was nothing but a second birth for Sangeetha. When elephant Sivam Lakshmi Ayyappan went mad from Thekkinkadu Maidan via Palace Road to the quiet lanes of Gandhi Nagar Colony in Cherur, she found herself trapped in his path — inside her car, on her way to work. There was barely time to react.

“Several youths on scooters rushed up and shouted, ‘The elephant is coming, back up!’ But there was no room for turning back. Another car was driving behind me and my daughter was coming on a scooter,” he recalls with a trembling voice.

Sangeetha who managed to miraculously escape from a rampaging elephant in Thrissur on Saturday. | Photo credit: KK NAJEEB

In that split second, instinct took over. She honked her horn and urged her daughter to come back. But before anything could make sense, the elephant was with her.

“The car lifted … just like that. I was suspended in the air for a moment,” she says. The animal dropped the vehicle back to the ground and drove on, leaving a stunned silence behind.

Back again

Local people rushed in and pulled her out of the wrecked car. “I feel like I’ve got my life back,” she says. Her daughter Shruthi, who witnessed the horror, is still shaken. “When the elephant came, I was in shock. I couldn’t do anything,” she says. But the suffering was not over.

Moments later, the elephant returned – as if drawn back to the wreckage – and crashed into the car again, slamming the trunk into the crumpled metal.

Published – 23 May 2026 21:04 IST