Man-eater strikes: Did officials kill wrong tiger?

Even as international experts had a brainstorming on how to save Indian tigers at Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve, a tiger killed another person just outside the main reserve.

Updated on: Mar 13, 2011, 24:30:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Even as international experts had a brainstorming on how to save Indian tigers at Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve, a tiger killed another person just outside the main reserve.

The person was a resident of Sundherkhal village in Corbett’s buffer zone, where a tiger had killed four persons in January this year.

The Uttarakhand forest department officials shot dead the alleged man-eater near the village.

His death had provided air to claims that the state forest department had killed the wrong tiger in January.

“The man-eating animal was probably a tigress and not a tiger, claimed as man eater by the state forest department,” said Navin Raheja, former member of steering committee of Project Tiger.

Raheja was of the view that the man-eater tigress would resurface after some time and may attack people in other areas.

The Friday’s victim was attacked at a different location than the earlier incidents.

“The tigress is highly cautious and it making its moves in a calculated manner,” he said.

Unlike the January incident, the Uttarakhand forest department has not declared the animal as man-eater.

“We are not in a hurry. We will first try to capture the animal,” said Anil Baluni, deputy chairperson of state forest advisory council.

There are said to be 13 tigers roaming in the buffer zone of the Corbett, where over 1,000 people live in Sunderkhal village and are vulnerable to attacks by tigers. Baluni said the only option was to relocate those living in Sundherkhal.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority had this week held a consultation with wildlife experts from the United States and Australia, two nations, which do not have tigers, for better protection and conservation of the endangered big cat.

None of the experts, who are still in Corbett, visited the Sunderkhal village, after the incident, area officials said.

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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