Female elephant mahout Parbati Barua from Assam conferred with Padma Shri

Guwahati, May 10: India's first female elephant mahout, Parbati Barua from Assam, was honoured with the Padma Shri award during the civil investiture ceremony in New Delhi on Thursday.

The President of India, Droupadi Murmu, bestowed the award on Barua, acknowledging her outstanding contributions to social work, especially her groundbreaking work in elephant conservation and wildlife management.

Barua is well-known for her innovative approaches to addressing human-elephant conflicts, incorporating scientific methods into her work as an elephant trainer.

Born on March 14, 1953, from the royal family of Assam’s Gauripur, she began her journey at the age of 14, achieving her first successful domestication of an elephant in the forests of Kachugaon, in the Kokrajhar district of Assam.