Personnel of the Tamil Nadu Forest Department on Wednesday shot dead a man-eating tiger which had sowed panic in the villages and tea estates in the border area of Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiri District and Kerala’s Wayanad District. The tiger had mauled to death two persons and devoured the body of one of them last week.
This was the second tiger to be shot dead in the same region in a little over two years. The Kerala Forest Department personnel had in December, 2012 shot dead a tiger which had strayed into the villages in the Sulthan Bathery area in Wayanad, killing about two dozen cattle in less than a month. The man-eating tiger was shot dead at 3.40 PM Wednesday at a tea estate in Susampady in the Benna forest area within the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu. The TN Forest personnel fired four rounds at the tiger but local residents said they had heard the sound of six rounds being fired.
The tiger was sighted at 2.30 PM by the workers at the estate, local residents said. Forest personnel who were scouring the forests nearby for the cat reached the spot immediately and shot dead the big cat after confirming that it was the man-eater they were searching for. The killing of the big cat triggered instant jubilations in villages on the Wayanad-Nilgiri border.
“The news has brought joy to all the people here,” said a resident of Bidarkad town which had witnessed violent protests on Saturday and Sunday after the big cat mauled to death Mahalakshmi (34), a tea estate worker at Pattavayal in the Gudalur Forest range in Tamil Nadu on Saturday. “At least, now we can go to work without fear,” she said.
The tiger, which had suffered a wound in the left ear, was a male weighing 400 kilos approximately, TN Forest officials said. However, there was no confirmation of the big cat’s age. The body of the tiger was taken in an open jeep to the Mudumalai Forest office after keeping it for the people to behold for a while at Bidarkad.
The first victim of the tiger was Bhaskaran (62), a farmer, in Noolpuzha, Wayanad, who had gone missing on February 9. Bhaskaran’s body was found the following day as scattered over a 250-sq metre area at Mookuthikkunnu in Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary and most of it had been devoured by the big cat.
The attack on Mahalakshmi had triggered a massive hunt for the tiger with the intention of capturing it using tranquilizer darts. Rajeesh, a youth who was with the team of TN Forest personnel engaged in the mission, was attacked by the tiger on Saturday and he is presently undergoing treatment at the Medical college Hospital in Kozhikode.
Following these incidents, the people launched a violent protest demanding security from the man-eater cast and the Tamil Nadu authorities were forced to promise them that the tiger would be killed in five days. The Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department had issued an order to kill the cat earlier.
The man-eating tiger was killed at the end of a massive four-day joint search in the forests and tea plantations on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border by over 400 personnel from the Forest departments of both states and as many watchers and local residents. The decision to kill the tiger was taken after it was established that paralysing it with darts would be impossible.
On Wednesday, the Kerala Cabinet announced a financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh to the family of Bhaskaran who was killed by the tiger. The Tamil Nadu Government had on Sunday promised to pay an assistance of Rs 10 lakh to the family of Mahalakshmi.