India vows probe after elephant killed with explosives

NEW DELHI: India pledged to investigate Thursday the death of a pregnant elephant that ate explosives-filled fruit, as cricket and Bollywood stars joined a chorus of outrage over the incident. The elephant died in agony last week in the southern state of Kerala, the latest casualty in a growing conflict in South Asia between large animals and humans as ever more forest is lost to urban expansion. Footage of the animal standing in a river for hours with its badly injured mouth and trunk in the water as it slowly weakened went viral, triggering horror and even calls for the culprits to be executed. India’s cricket captain Virat Kohli said on social media he was “appalled” while Bollywood megastar Akshay Kumar tweeted that the incident was “heartbreaking, inhumane and unacceptable”.