A man was trampled to death after trying to take a selfie with an elephant.
Srikant Satre, 23, and two of his friends ventured into the Abapur forest near the central Indian town of Gadchiroli after receiving reports that an elephant had been spotted nearby.
Once they saw the elephant, the trio decided to start posing for photographs with the wild animal.
It was at that moment that the elephant charged at them and killed Mr Satre while he was trying to take a selfie with him.
The workers were in the city, located in the Indian state of Maharashtra, to carry out cable-laying work when on Tuesday they heard rumors from locals that an elephant had been sighted nearby.
Srikant Satre, 23, was trampled to death by an elephant while trying to take a selfie with the animal (file image)
According to the Indian news website NDTVThe three friends agreed to go look for the animal when they were not working on Thursday morning.
In September, a herd of elephants killed a five-month pregnant woman and her unborn baby in Indonesia.
Karsini, 33, a mother of three, was beating rubber trees with her husband Rasum on Sunday when the herd of about 15 jumbo jets entered their plantation in southern Sumatra.
The wife banged empty drums like cymbals in a desperate attempt to scare away the animals, each of which weighed up to 4,000kg.
But the wild animals, frightened or enraged by the beatings, charged at the couple and brutally trampled Karsini and her unborn baby to death.
After the herd moved away, villagers from Musi Rawas Regency collected Karsini’s corpse from the forest.
The elephant’s conservation status was upgraded to critically endangered, as its population has reportedly declined by at least 80 percent over the past 75 years.
The three friends ventured into the Abapur forest (pictured), near the central Indian town of Gadchiroli, after receiving reports that an elephant had been sighted nearby.
Elephants are rarely aggressive, but may act if they feel threatened or to protect their young.
In India alone, about 400 people die each year in confrontations with elephants, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Human development has also brought wild elephants to the brink of extinction; Today there are between 30,000 and 50,000 elephants left in the world.
Most live in India, where thousands of captive elephants are forced to work their entire lives in terrible conditions, overheated, mistreated and, in some cases, beaten for misbehaving.
