NILGIRIS: A male tiger which is suspected to have killed 13 cows was trapped in a cage at Devarsholai in the Gudalur forest division early on Saturday morning. The forest department had been trying to capture it for the last three months.
The big cat, aged three years, entered the cage in which a cow was kept as bait in the wee hours of Saturday.
Chief Wildlife Warden Rakesh Kumar Dogra had issued an order to capture it in the first week of August after 13 cows were preyed upon in the surroundings of Devarsholai in Gudalur forest range in a span of six months before August.
A huge cage (30ft long and 10ft high) with back and front gates was placed at the end of August after it was sourced from Wayanad in Kerala.
“We will shift the animal to a small cage for easy transportation. It will be done as per the NTCA guidelines,” said Gudalur District Forest Officer N Venkatesh Prabhu.
“The stripe pattern of the animal is the same as the one we had observed on camera traps that were fixed to track the animal that had killed 13 cows. We have not sedated the tiger. It is very aggressive now. We are trying to calm it down,” the official said.
The tiger will be released inside the reserve forest far away from any residential location.