Hyderabad: Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, an experienced tracker who has often been called in to assist forest departments across the country, was called by the Tamil Nadu forest department recently to tranquillise a man-eating tiger at Kundachappai near Doddadetta Peak, close to Ootacamund. The tiger had killed three people in the surrounding villages. While still in Ooty, Khan got another call, this time from the UP government, to hunt down another man-eater in Moradabad.
Explaining the situation, Khan told this correspondent from Tamil Nadu that while Doddadetta Peak is a popular tourist destination, tourists have stopped going there for the last eight days, and the villagers are terrified.
“They earn their livelihood growing potato and lettuce and haven’t picked the crop for the last eight days. It’s a curfew-like situation. The houses don’t have toilets so the villagers had to attend to nature’s calls in their premises,” Khan said.
After seeing the pugmarks, Khan confirmed that it was a young tiger. “It was spotted twice in the camera traps. Special Task Force and forest department guards have begun combing the area. However, tracking a tiger is different. One has to think like a tiger and anticipate its movements.
It appeared that the tiger was trapped among the villages. As they are all tea gardens, tracking on an elephant is impossible; the sharp edges injure the elephant’s legs. Tranquilising in a hilly terrain is also not easy.
But before the tiger kills others, the only option is to shoot it down. However, at present, I’ve been asked to help the forest department in tranquillising,” Khan, who carries a .458 magnum weapon, said.
“I trailed, identified and shot a man-eating tigress in Faizabad on February 24, 2009. The UP government has called me again, but the authorities here are reluctant to let me go. They have no authorised shooter arm-ed with a heavy rifle, nor the expertise in handling an explosive case,” he said.
Rohilkhand zone’s chief conservator of forests, M.P. Singh has issued an order for culling the man-eating tiger, and Khan has been given permission to carry a weapon by air from Coimbatore to Delhi.
Khan said that a big controversy erupted when he had killed a man-eating leopard in HP. But there were no more attacks after that. “I take a risk to track down and identify man-eaters in thick bush and difficult terrain,” he says.
