Visakhapatnam: A villager claimed to have spotted a tiger walking on the road near a temple at Semunapalli village under Chodavaram mandal on Monday morning.
Labourer from Gullipalli village K Ramana saw the tiger near a temple while he was riding his moped to Ryapurajupet around 9.30am. He immediately rushed to the village and alerted sarpanch Boddeda Ramu. Ramu alerted the forest staff who called in the local police.
Reports said the police asked the villagers through the public address system to remain indoors.
“We alerted all the nearby villagers through the public address system. Footprints could not be obtained as the road was made of gravel,’’ said sub-inspector Attada Vibheeshan. Forest conservator Rama Mohan told DC the villager might have seen a wild dog and got confused.
A tiger was on the prowl within the K Kotapadu and Chodavaram mandals. Last week, a similar alarm was raised but it proved to be false, he said.
“Tigers seldom move in daylight. It came to the spot to eat the remaining parts of the calf in the wee hours on Sunday, a while after it killed the calf in the early hours,’’ the CFO said.
Meanwhile, forest officials are consulting experts from the Wildlife Institute of India and the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve to trap the four-year-old male tiger. The tiger killed some cattle and calves during its prowl in the last one week.
District forest officer Ananat Shankar said they were in touch with Prof Parag Nigam of the Wildlife Institute of India and experts from the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh.
Experts from Dudhwa, who trapped two tigers in UP, would bring in a special cage to trap the tiger, he said, adding that his team was using drone cameras as well as infrared and night vision cameras to track the movement of the animal.
