A 42-year-old contractual employee of the forest department posted at Harinalaya Mini Zoo, near Eco Park in New Town, was gored by a male spotted deer with its antlers.
Prasad Barman’s small intestine was pierced by the deer’s antler on Tuesday morning and he had to undergo a life-saving surgery.
“Around 8.30am on Tuesday, I went to feed the deer inside the enclosure. A colleague, who has been working in the zoo for a few months, was accompanying me,” an official at Charnock Hospital, where Barman under-went surgery, quoted him as saying.
“After we entered the enclosure, I saw one male deer coming towards us and I could make out that he would attack my colleague.”
Barman said he pushed his colleague aside but failed to move out of harm’s way himself.
“The deer’s antler pierced my stomach. I fell on the ground and could feel there was a hole in my abdomen. I pressed it with my hands,” Barman was quoted as saying.
He told hospital officials that he had been feeding the deer in the New Town zoo ever since he joined work there in 2016.
“Never had I faced attack from any animal before. I think the male deer became aggressive because the mating season is on. There are more males in the zoo than females and that could have made the male deer (the one that attacked him) aggressive,” he told hospital officials.
Barman said the male deer that attacked him was brought to the zoo in 2017. It had never behaved in such an aggressive manner before.
Barman was first taken to the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital and later shifted to Charnock Hospital.
“When he arrived, the intestinal fluid was coming out through the hole in his abdomen. That could have led to sepsis, a life-threatening condition,” said Arkaprovo Roy, consultant general surgeon at Charnock Hospital.
Roy and a team from the gastro-surgery department of the private hospital performed a resection anastomosis, a surgical procedure by which the damaged portion of the intestine was removed and the rest was repaired, on Tuesday.
“The antler had pierced the small intestine and came out from the other end. So, there were two holes in the small intestine,” Roy said on Friday. “The patient is still in the intensive care unit and on liquid diet.”
Rabindranath Saha, conservator of forests, parks and garden circle, described the attack as an accident.
“The injured man has been with us for quite a long time and is quite experienced. However, there is always a certain amount of risk involved when dealing with wild animals. The good news is he is responding to the treatment well,” said Saha. The New Town zoo is under his supervision.
According to a forest department official, there are two types of deer at Harinalaya Mini Zoo — barking deer and spotted deer.
Male spotted deer have large antlers and often fight with other males in the herd to take a dominant role and win better chances of mating with females.
At Harinalaya, the spotted deer and barking deer had been kept in the same enclosure for several weeks as a new enclosure to house one of the species is still under construction, a forester posted at the park said.
He said there were incidents of spotted deer and barking deer picking fights with one other. “A high level of aggression was on display during such fights,” the forester said.
A forest department employee posted at the New Town park said the male spotted deer that attacked Barman had been seen fighting on and off.
In Harinalaya, there are 36 spotted deer and a number of barking deer. On Friday, The Telegraph found the spotted deer had been removed from the enclosure. “They have been kept in another enclosure under observation,” said a forest official.
The New Town zoo, spread across 17 acres, has come up in the deer park, near Eco Park’s gate number 6.
Nearly 70 per cent of the zoo’s space is open. The enclosures have been planned in accordance with the guidelines of the Central Zoo Authority, said an official.
This zoo has a hippopotamus, deer, zebras, crocodiles, a variety of monkeys and birds.