BENGALURU: Inspired by the web series Forensic Files, a team of forensic experts from a Bengaluru lab has solved the shocking death of four tigers in the Mhadei wildlife sanctuary in Goa, close to the Karnataka border. This is for the first time that highly decomposed tiger samples have been analysed using the ELISA kit, imported from the US. This will help resolve future cases of tiger killings, unnatural deaths and also conviction of offenders and poachers.
The lab said that one of the big cats had been poisoned with pyrethroid group of chemicals, used in pesticides. Till date, the cause of death of any tiger remained inconclusive if the carcass was highly decomposed, while forest officials deduced it as a territorial fight, a natural death or just reported it as unknown.
The Goa forest department had sent the samples to three labs (Goa, Bengaluru and Bareilly) for a toxicological analysis and to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad for DNA analysis.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the tigers were poisoned by local villagers. But without forensic investigations or scientific evidence, the case would have remained inconclusive and in a court of law, the source of poisoning could not have been established.
One of the experts said, “We tried all methods but they were not giving conclusive evidence. We decided to import the ELISA kit from the US. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the kit arrived only last month.”
A team of experts, led by Dr Prayag HS, chief veterinary officer and assistant professor, KVAFSU, found pyrethroid in all the vital organs of the tiger. The Indian Veterinary Research Institute in Bareilly too gave its report, but it was based on pooled samples of all the four tigers and did not specify which tiger among the four was poisoned.
Tiger analysis
The case was referred to Karnataka by ACF (Wildlife & Eco-tourism) North Division, Panaji. On January 14 & 17, totally 58 samples from vital organs were received by the Bengaluru lab and toxicological tests were done to ascertain the cause of death.