PATNA: A man-eating tiger that killed nine people in the Valmiki Tiger Reserve (VTR) area in Bihar’s West Champaran district in the last 26 days was finally shot dead on Saturday, causing much relief to the
local residents.
An eight-member team consisting of personnel from the Special Task Force, District Armed Police and forest department was engaged in the four-hour operation after the ferocious big cat killed a woman and her minor son at Balua village of Raghia forest in VTR early on Saturday. The deceased were identified as Babita Devi (23) and her seven-year-old son, Shivam.
Chief Wildlife Warden Prabhat Kumar Gupta had issued a shoot-at-sight order after the tiger attacked a 35-year-old man Sanjay Mahto, a resident of Dumri village under Ramnagar block in West Champaran district, leading to his death on Friday.
The tiger mauled him to death when the victim had gone to defecate near the bushes close to the forest area. Frequent attacks on the residents were causing great resentment among the people against the forest department officials as well as the police.
“The orders for killing the tiger are issued as per procedure when it is established that the animal is accustomed to living in human habitation. The tiger had killed four people in the last three days,” a senior forest department official told this newspaper.
On Thursday night, a 12-year-old girl fell prey to the man-eating tiger. The deceased was identified as Bagadi Kumari, a resident of Sigadi village. The incident happened when she was sleeping in her house.
Forest department officials said that all the victims belonged to the villages adjacent to VTR.
Earlier, a sharp shooter, Shafat Ali, was called from Hyderabad to Bihar to capture the man-eating tiger but the efforts to nab the animal went in vain. The officials attributed the frequent attacks of wild animals on human beings to the growing man-animal conflict in the region.