Shoot-at-sight order for Ramnagar’s man-eater
DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand forest officials issued a shoot-at-sight order on Tuesday night for a four-yearold tigress that has allegedly killed two people and injured another in the state’s Ramnagar area.
The order came after chief minister Harish Rawat took cognizance of the threat posed by the tigers to people living in the hill state and directed the department to “neutralise” the rogue big cat at the earliest, said a forest department official wishing anonymity.
“The CM has asked the department to do everything possible to protect the people of Ramnagar. This has put pressure on us,” the officer added.
The ruling Congress apparently did not want to take any chances ahead of the assembly elections due early next year.
Chief wildlife warden Digvijay Singh Khati deployed three shooters to hunt the tigress.
“The shooters have reached from Terai West forest division. But our priority will be to tranquilise the animal,” said Surendra Mehra, the director of Corbett Tiger Reserve.
Khati issued an order to tranquilise the animal on September 21 after two sample reports from the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India indicated the tigress has become a man-eater.
Attempt to tranquilise the animal had failed on the night of September 26 when it escaped into the dense forest hoodwinking the officials deployed to trap it.
Since then an intensive search is on to trace the animal. But the forest officials are finding it difficult to locate her as the area is dotted with sugarcane fields, which serve as a good hideout, spread across 10 kilometres.
TWO DAYS LATER, THE TIGER KILLED THE BAIT IN THE SAME AREA FROM WHERE SAMPLES WERE COLLECTED.
Along with scaffoldings at three places, seven camera traps and two tranquilsing teams have been deployed.
The first incident of attack by the tigress was reported on September 6 when a 60-year-old woman was killed in Karanpur village. The animal didn’t feed on the corpse then.
In the second incident, reported on September 17, the half-eaten corpse of a 35- year-old man was recovered after he was attacked by the tigress.
But before being killed, the man in a desperate attempt to fight back hit the tigress with a sharp weapon.
Officers collected samples of its claw and hair found on the weapon and sent them to WII for testing.
Two days later, the tiger killed the bait in the same area from where samples were collected. Reports of both samples confirmed that the killer was a tigress.
“Reports of both samples claim that it’s a young tigress. We cannot take further chances. So, I have given a shoot-at-sight order to officers,” Khati said.