Avni had not eaten for days before being shot: Autopsy
MUMBAI: Tigress Avni died due to excessive internal haemorrhage and cardio-respiratory failure and her stomach and intestines were filled with fluid and gas, indicating she had not hunted or eaten for 4-5 days, according to a provisional report. The tigress, believed to have turned man-eater and killed 13 in Yavatmal, was shot dead last Friday.
MUMBAI: Seven days after tigress T-1, also known as Avni, was killed by the forest department in Yavatmal, two independent probes, one at the national level and the other in Maharashtra, will be conducted, as the report of the autopsy conducted on her and accessed by HT threw up inconsistencies in the accounts of her death.
The first investigation will be done by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) under Union environment ministry, which has formed a threemember panel that will submit its report by November 26. The Fadnavis government has formed a body to study the process in which permissions were granted to kill the animal. “Following several media reports about this incident, we have decided that this committee will study the last part of this operation, especially the process in which T-1 was allegedly tranquillised and eliminated,” said Anup Kumar Nayak, additional director general, NTCA.
Petitioner Jerryl A Banait, who approached Supreme Court and Bombay high court to stop T-1’s killing, said: “Both reports will be biased. There was a need to have an independent special investigating team on this.”
INCONSISTENCIES
T-1’s autopsy report, which was not publicly released by the forest department but accessed by HT, read, “In our opinion, the tigress died of excessive internal haemorrhages and cardio-respiratory failure.” She had not eaten in a while as “her stomach was fluid filled with no major solid contents”, the report read.
“The dart only pierced the surface of the tigress’s carcass, which meant that it was merely placed by the forest team to show that the tigress had been tranquillised or else the quantity would have been more,” he said.