For years, the crocodile named Dhalapahar lived in a pond where the boundaries between wildlife and human habitation had become unusually blurred.
Pilgrims came to the shrine of Khan Jahan Ali in Bagerhat. Caretakers and devotees fed the crocodiles. Visitors approached the water. The animals themselves had become part of the identity of the centuries-old religious site, their presence sustained by stories passed down through generations.
Then, on the night of June 1, an eight-year-old girl named Fatema went down to the women’s bathing ghat. She did not return alive.
The crocodile named Dhalapahar attacked the child as she entered the water, apparently to bathe or wash her hands and face. Her body surfaced in the pond the following morning.
Within two days, Dhalapahar’s life at the shrine was over.
Forest officials captured the female crocodile on June 3 and transported her to the Boyra Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Khulna. Local residents said the animal had previously attacked and killed a dog, but Fatema’s death transformed what had long been regarded as an accepted, if unusual, coexistence into a public safety concern.
On August 12, Dhalapahar was moved again, this time under special arrangements to Dulahazara Safari Park in Cox’s Bazar.
The transfer closed another chapter in the history of a pond where crocodiles have occupied a place somewhere between wildlife and local tradition for generations.
Nirmal Kumar Pal, divisional forest officer of the Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation Division in Khulna, told Daily Waadaa that a rescue and rehabilitation centre was not suitable for keeping an animal permanently. Officials began searching for a larger habitat and, after correspondence with the Forest Department’s wildlife authorities in Dhaka, selected Dulahazara.
At the safari park, Dhalapahar now lives in a far more controlled setting.
Talking with Waadaa, Manjurul Alam, the park’s officer-in-charge, said the crocodile appeared healthy and was behaving normally. A medical assessment was also expected to provide officials with a clearer picture of her condition.
One issue has drawn particular attention: Dhalapahar has barely been eating.
The crocodile ate almost nothing while being held at Boyra, according to Pal. When efforts to encourage her to feed failed, Bangladeshi officials consulted crocodile experts in Australia.
Their advice was reassuring. A crocodile in captivity can go for extended periods without food, they said, and force-feeding was unnecessary.
A veterinarian who examined Dhalapahar in Khulna also found her healthy.
Crocodiles are cold-blooded and require relatively little energy compared with warm-blooded animals. They can also draw on stored body fat for long periods. Moving into an unfamiliar environment can further disrupt their feeding patterns, Pal said.
Forest Department estimates put Dhalapahar’s length at seven to eight feet and her weight at roughly 400 to 500 kilograms.
Her importance in Bagerhat, however, had little to do with measurements.
The crocodiles of the Khan Jahan Ali shrine are woven into Bagerhat’s local history.
According to folklore, Khan Jahan Ali released two crocodiles into the pond after it was excavated. Over generations, shrine caretakers and devotees fed the animals, helping create an extraordinary relationship in which large predators became familiar inhabitants of a heavily visited religious site.
The story is more than oral tradition.
A historical work by Satish Chandra Mitra published in 1914 referred to two crocodiles in the pond named Kalapahar and Dhalapahar — names that would remain associated with the shrine’s crocodiles for decades.
As their numbers dwindled, officials attempted to preserve the tradition. On June 26, 2004, six freshwater crocodiles brought from the Madras Crocodile Bank in India were released into the pond.
But the old lineage was disappearing.
On February 5, 2015, a century-old crocodile known as Dhalapahar died, bringing to an end what was believed locally to be the surviving lineage of crocodiles dating back to the shrine’s earlier history.
Of the animals introduced from India, some later died and others were relocated. Eventually, only the female now known as Dhalapahar remained.
For years, she continued much as the crocodiles before her had — inhabiting a pond surrounded by people, pilgrims and a tradition that had made the presence of a formidable predator seem almost ordinary.
Fatema’s death made that arrangement impossible to sustain.
--