Ranchi: At an age when most students were busy with Class 12 board exams, 17-year-old Avi Mohan Shukla was spending nights building a device to tackle one of Jharkhand’s most persistent rural crises — human-elephant conflict.The urgency is stark. In Hazaribag’s Barkatha block, a 32-year-old daily wager was trampled to death by a herd on July 7, days after a 50-year-old man was killed by three elephants on July 4. In May, two young men — a 25-year-old in Giridih and a 19-year-old student — died in elephant attacks. Elephants, too, paid a heavy price: a tusker was electrocuted in Chandil on May 6, while IED blasts killed or fatally injured elephants in Saranda and West Singhbhum on May 15, Oct 12, 2025, July 6, 2025, and July 10.Against this backdrop, Shukla, who cleared his Class 12 board exams this year, has developed ‘InnoBox’, a low-cost, AI-enabled early-warning device designed to detect wild animals near farmlands and alert villagers without harming the animals. After a pilot in Rasabera village of East Singhbhum, carried out with support from IIM Ranchi, the forest department has sanctioned Rs 1 lakh to deploy 10 more units at 10 locations.“The deployment is expected next month, possibly in the Ranchi and Khunti belt,” Shukla told TOI.The solar-powered device uses seismic sensors, radar and an AI-enabled camera to identify whether the approaching animal is an elephant, monkey or another species. “Only after all three systems confirm animal presence does the device activate a 120-decibel siren, strobe lights and SMS alerts to villagers and forest officials — all within 120 milliseconds,” he said.Each unit, Shukla claimed, would cost around Rs 7,000 when produced in bulk, compared with Rs 2 lakh to Rs 3 lakh needed to install 1 km of electric fencing.The idea, he said, came in Aug 2025 after his grandfather told him about a farmer who lost crops worth nearly Rs 1 lakh to elephants in one night. “Compensation comes after the damage. I wanted to warn farmers before elephants reached their fields,” he said.The first prototype was ready in about a month, but early trials saw false alarms. Shukla said the upgraded version, now being tested on wild elephants in Palamu Tiger Reserve, has achieved 80%-85% accuracy in reducing false alerts. He has also been deputed to PTR’s tiger cell under a tech fellowship for conflict mitigation.Chief wildlife warden Ravi Ranjan said a multi-layer plan is being worked out around the device. “In PTR (Betla), field tests are nearly complete and the prototype is being recalibrated. In the first phase, we aim to install them at 10 places across Ranchi forest range. Based on the outcome, we will plan further,” he said.
