A lone wild tusker strayed into a tea estate in eastern Dooars on Monday early morning and devoured food grains that were supposed to be distributed among garden workers and their families.

The elephant also walked into the bungalow of an assistant manager, prompting the latter to run away withhis family.

Sources said the tusker reached the Central Dooars tea estate in the Kalchini block of the Alipurduar district from the neighbouring Pana forest at around 2am.

It went to a godown near the garden’s factory and damaged the fence and a wall of the godown. The elephant then devoured the food grains that were stored there and left the spot after some time.

From there, the animal moved towards the bungalow of Bishal Thapa, an assistant manager, and broke a door in the rear of the building. Thapa, along with his wife and daughter, ran out of the bungalow and took shelter in the lodging of another employee.

The elephant attack alerted the workers and a section of them started bursting sound crackers. After a couple of hours, the tusker returned to the forest.

“The elephant ate as well as damaged the food grains at the down. One of our assistant managers and his family were lucky to save themselves but the bungalow was damaged. We are assessing the loss,” said Santanu Basu, the garden’s manager.

He mentioned that a couple of days back, another elephant had entered the garden and had damaged two workers’ quarters.

“We have asked the workers to be on alert. The forest department has also been intimated about frequent incidents of elephant depredation at the garden,” he added.