Tiger kills man in Madhya Pradesh tiger reserve

In a repeat of Delhi Zoo case, a young tiger in Bandhavgarh forest mauled a person on Friday after he teased the two-year-old big cat in a bid to shoo him away with a wooden stick.

Updated on: Oct 24, 2014, 23:14:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi/Jabalpur

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In a repeat of Delhi Zoo case, a young tiger in Bandhavgarh forest mauled a person on Friday after he teased the two-year-old big cat in a bid to shoo him away with a wooden stick.

The killing of the retired teacher identified as Lakra Singh, who ventured deep inside the forest, had caused unrest in the tiger habitat with the locals demanding that the tiger should be declared as a man-eater, said a local Madhya Pradesh forest official.

The demand supported by local political groups is being resisted by the forest officials and tiger experts.

"This tiger is not a man-eater. The killing is not his fault but we will investigate how it happened," said MP’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Narendra Kumar. "The person went to the restricted forest area and panicked at seeing the tiger sitting on a cliff. The tiger attacked him only after he tried to frighten him."

Villagers set the forest office at Khitoli village in Katni district on fire after the incident. Khitoli village falls in Barhi forest range and is close to Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. Katni superintendent of police Rajesh Hingankar said the office of forest department was damaged. A police team has been deployed at the spot, he said.

Fayaz Khudsar, a wildlife biologist, who has worked extensively in tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh, said the tiger did not enter a village and attack the person. "It was the other way around. One cannot punish a tiger for no fault of his," he added.

The tiger along with a cub is moving in and around the core and buffer areas of Bandhavgarh tiger reserve since January to determine his home territory, a key component for tigers to breed in future. However, this tiger has not entered any local village or even attacked local cattle hinting at he having no signs of turning into a man-eater.

Five years ago, a tigress killed a person inside Bandhavgarh tiger reserve but was declared a man-eater after pressure from locals. She was relocated to a local zoo and forced to live in jail-like conditions, Khudsar said.

Madhya Pradesh, which lost the tag of being the tiger state of India five years ago, has seen an increase in man-tiger conflict. At least five tigers have been accused of killing locals in Bandhavgarh this year but, fortunately, not even a single has been declared man-eater.

Kumar said a proper investigation will be done before deciding on the demand of locals to declare the young tiger a man-eater.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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