Hyderabad: TS foresters have been unable to trace the missing Royal Bengal tiger named Jai, after Amitabh Bachchan’s character in the film Sholay. TS foresters had joined the hunt following a request from the Maharashtra forest department, after the tiger went missing on April 18 from the Umred Karhandla sanctuary, 58 km from Nagpur.
Jai, 7, weighing about 250 kg, was the most famous inmate of the Umred Karhandla sanctuary. It had been fitted with a radio collar which fell silent the same day. The chances of poachers killing it is not ruled out.
Mr Raviprasad, district forest officer at Kagaznagar in Adilabad district, said there was no trace of Jai in the forests, the first entry point of Tadoba Andhari tiger reserve in Chandrapur, Maharashtra.
“We deployed 35 trackers. It’s well built, 9.5 to 10 feet in length with 16-18 cm pug marks. It can travel long distances. It might have left in search of a mate or new territory,” he said, adding the Kagaznagar forest belt was spread over 91,760 sq km.
“Jai remains untraced. Though some claimed to have seen, it is not pucca information. We have about 22 tigers in sanctuary,” Mr Prashant, a marketing official of the sanctuary.
Jai and brother Veeru were born to Mai at the Nagzira sanctuary in Maharashtra in 2010. Veeru also is missing. In 2013, Jai traversed 100 km, crossing highways, rivers and villages but returned home.
