KOLKATA: A wild elephant rampaged through an east Indian town on Wednesday, smashing homes and sending panicked residents running. As the frightened elephant ran amok, trampling parked cars and motorbikes, crowds of people gathered to watch from balconies and roof tops.

“The elephant was scared and was trying to go back to the jungle,” said Papaiya Sarkar, a 40-year-old homemaker who watched the elephant amble down a street near her home.

An official said the animal did not attack any people, and appeared to be afraid of them. After several hours, it became clear the elephant was unable to find its way back to the forest.

Authorities eventually shot the elephant three times with a tranquilizer gun and used a crane to lift it into a truck once it had calmed down. It was then taken to a special park for domesticated pachyderms that is maintained by the forest department.

Once the effect of the tranquilizer wore off, authorities planned to return the elephant to the forest, Rai said.

On Wednesday, another wild elephant trampled a farmer to death in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The farmer had been sleeping in his field.

India’s elephants are also threatened by speeding trains and illegal poachers looking for ivory to sell on the black market. Today, there are about 30,000 elephants across the country, restricted to about 15 percent of their historic habitat, according to the environment ministry.

Worldwide, elephants have disappeared from some 95 percent of their historical range, which once stretched from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Yellow River in northern China.