Published Dec 06, 2024 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Dec 06, 2024 | 1:29 PM
Forest officials on edge as man-eating tiger pauses in Asifabad after fatal attack
The Forest Department officials in Telangana are unable to locate the tiger that killed 21-year-old Morle Lakshmi and mauled a farmer named Suresh in the Komaram Bheem-Asifabad district.
The officials speculated that the tiger might have returned to the forests of Maharashtra from where it migrated to Telangana, considering the cattle attacks there that followed those in Telangana.
On 29 November, a tiger attacked Lakshmi at the Nazrulnagar area in Kagaznagar mandal. She was picking cotton along with six other women when the tiger attacked her.
The tiger tried dragging Lakshmi but left her and fled into the forest after her co-workers shouted at it. Subsequently, she was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead on arrival.
Lakshmi’s death was the fourth fatal tiger attack on humans in recent years in Asifabad district. Nazarulnagar, where the tiger attacked the woman, is hardly 20 to 25 km from the Maharashtra border.
On 30 November, a tiger attacked a farmer Suresh in Dubbagueem in Sirpur-T mandal, reportedly the same one that killed Lakshmi. The tiger left him after his wife and the other farmers made loud noises. In the following days, several cattle were also attacked.
Meanwhile, forest department officials wondered if the tiger went to Maharashtra since cattle attacks were reported there.
“We are not sure where the tiger that killed a woman recently is. We have sent samples from the cattle killed in Telangana and Maharashtra for examination to find whether it is the same tiger. Even if the tiger that attacked the cattle in Maharashtra is the same one that attacked the woman in Telangana, there is no guarantee that it would not come back to Telangana. We are asking the villagers to be alert,” Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Neeraj Kumar said.
The officials, nonetheless, are continuing the search for the tiger with the help of drones. They found pugmarks of the tiger close to the Maharashtra border, fuelling suspicion that the tiger may have gone to Maharashtra.
However, the villagers in the Wankidi Mandal are spending sleepless nights after hearing the growls of tigers during nights and finding pug marks at the places where the growls were heard.
With the possibility of tiger attacks, the forest officials asked the villagers to be vigilant. They also asked them to wear masks with human faces on the back of their heads since big cats usually attack from behind.
The technique of deceiving tigers with such a method has been successfully implemented in the Sundarbans. However, it may not work for long as tigers could get accustomed to such methods, officials said.
According to official sources, tigers usually avoid attacking human beings unless they are provoked or acting in self-defence.
“They sometimes get restive when they do not find the carcass of the animal that they had killed the previous days, to feed on it. This usually happens when the carcasses are set on fire by the officials to prevent the villagers from poisoning them to kill the tigers when they return to feast on them, which is a tiger conservation measure,” sources said.
The tiger that killed Lakshmi was driven away from the nearby reserve forest area by the locals. The animal became disturbed and entered the cotton field after villages started shouting at it and started taking photographs.
It attacked Lakshmi, who was picking cotton in a stretch of podu cultivation land, while on its way to another part of the reserve forest.
“The cotton fields in large stretches between the reserve forest patches provide no cover for the tigers. If a tiger wants to move from one stretch to another, it has to move through fields where cotton is grown. It is when the animal-human conflict occurs,” the DFO said.
Officials believe that two tigers migrated from Tadoba Andhari Reserve in Maharashtra to the Kagaznagar corridor in the Komaram Bheem-Asifabad district, unable to live there since the reserve had a high tiger population.
According to official sources, the two tigers ventured into the Kagaznagar corridor some time ago. They joined the five “resident” tigers in Kagaznagar Corridor.
They noted that the tigers keep moving to Telangana during winter as it is the mating season. Both male and female tigers from the Tadoba Andhari Reserve in Maharashtra visit Telangana. Some of them are driven away by the resident tigers to protect their dominance in the area.
According to local sources, the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve has about 100 tigers. Several of them find their movements restricted because of the dominance of the other tigers.
They keep crossing to Telangana as only the Pranhita river stands between the two states. These tigers cross the 250-metre-wide river and enter the Kagaznagar Tiger corridor.
Since the abundance of water in the river makes its surrounding villages apt for cattle grazing, the tigers find the habitat very hospitable. The tigers feast on cattle since the deer population has declined over time. The attacks on human beings are mostly in self-defence.
“The tigers usually keep away from human beings. They are as afraid of us as we are of them,” a source said. The source added that the attack on Lakshmi took place when she was picking cotton, bent forward. She probably appeared like a grazing buffalo or a cow to the tiger.
Since agricultural lands are often located between the reserve forest patches in the tiger corridor, where podu cultivation takes place, farmers tend to create trouble for the tigers whenever they spot them. Irritated, the big cats sometimes retaliate by attacking.
The source said that if the gaps between the reserve forest patches were closed, the tigers would have safe passage from one place to the other in the corridor, minimising the possibility of a face-off between the tigers and human beings.
(Edited by Ananya Rao)
