Bengaluru: Two days after a tiger attacked and killed a villager outside the Bandipur Tiger Reserve (BTR), the combing team shot the tiger when it tried to attack a forester on Thursday. The deceased tiger was a male and aged about 12 years. The shooting of the tiger occurred near the very place where the tiger had killed the villager Shivaiah, 50, and devoured his body parts.
The drama unfolded on Thursday evening, when the combing teams, comprising police and forest personnel and sharpshooters, were ready to close the day’s search operation. The tiger, which was behind a thick bush, sprang out and attacked a forest watcher from Hediyala Range, Mr Shivakumar, when he and his team were looking for signs of the tiger.
After this sudden attack, sharpshooter Sushil Kumar, immediately fired. The bullet entered the ear of the tiger and went into its brain, killing it instantly.
The combing teams had been trying to trace the tiger for two days, but in vain. On Tuesday, when the tiger had attacked two people and killed a villager, the forest team had tried to tranquilize the animal. The pressure to ‘remove’ the tiger from the forest was mounting from villagers, who were upset about the previous attacks.
“On Thursday there was hardly any movement of this particular tiger till 1 pm. By lunch, the occupants of a forest jeep found the tiger sleeping near the trench and informed the combing team.
However, the tiger once again slipped away and sneaked into the forest. Three trained elephants from Bandipur Reserve were also used in the operation, after the area being covered by the tiger was known. We had put in every effort to ensure that the tiger was caught alive, but the shooting became necessary as it had attacked the guard. The injured guard has been treated at Nanjangudu hospital and has been shifted to Mysuru,” said a forest official from Bandipur.
This is the second tiger shooting incident in the state in 2015 alone. The wildlife experts and activists are often divided over removing the problematic animals by means of shooting them down.
“If the forest department was serious about capturing the tiger alive, it would not have hired a sharpshooter. Sushil Kumar is the same person who was responsible for killing more than 20 leopards in the mid 1990s around Kadur town in pursuit of a man-eating leopard. We hope that the tiger that was shot in Bandipur is the same animal which had attacked the villager,” said a wildlife activist.
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