Man-eating tiger shot dead after 2 years of terror
Hunt became one of longest, most expensive in modern India
By Hari Kumar and Jeffrey Gettleman
NEW DELHI — The hunt is over.
A man-eating tiger that stalked the hills of central India for more than two years and was suspected of killing at least 13 villagers was felled by a bullet Friday night, officials said.
The plan had been to tranquilize the female tiger, called T-1. But according to the hunters who tried to capture her, there was no choice but to killer her.
Villagers in the area terrorized by T-1 erupted in joy when they heard about her death, shooting off firecrackers, passing out sweets and pumping their fists in the air.
Wildlife activists were furious.
“This is a coldblooded murder,” said Jerryl Banait, an animal rights advocate who had gone all the way to India’s Supreme Court in an attempt to force the authorities to spare the tiger’s life and capture her instead.
For months, the noose had been tightening around T-1. Hundreds of forest rangers fanned out across the jungles of central Maharashtra state. A heatseeking drone, more than 100 remote cameras and a team of specially trained Indian elephants with sharpshooters mounted on their backs were used in the search. It became one of the biggest, longest and most expensive tiger hunts in India in recent memory. T-1 was unusually crafty. “She has learned from all these botched capture operations,’’ said Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, a famous tiger hunter who the authorities had called in to help. “We’ve made her very smart. Brilliant, actually.”
On Friday afternoon, villagers saw a female tiger trotting down the road. People began to panic.
Khan’s son, Asghar, also a hunter, rushed out with a team of rangers in a small open jeep. They spotted a female tiger moving through the bushes and determined it was T-1.
One ranger fired a dart, forestry officials said. The dart hit. But, according to the authorities, T-1 moved back, roared and charged the open jeep. Asghar Khan then fired a bullet from a high-powered rifle. The authorities said it was in “selfdefense.’’
Few villagers in this area expressed anything but joy that she was gone.
“Now our lives will be back to normal,” said Hidayat Khan, who lives in the area where T-1 killed several people. “We can go to our fields and do our work.”
But, he added, the cubs are still out there.
The authorities have not said what will happen to them.
On Saturday, villagers spotted one of the cubs climbing a hill, near where T-1 had died.