After a lull of a month, the rumour of a tiger roaming around the Nandankanan zoo area spread again putting the zoo employees and forest officials on their toes on Sunday. The suspicion grew strong when a visitor showed the photograph of a wandering animal behind the tiger enclosure.
The visitors and the driver of the Safari vehicle claimed that they saw a tiger when they were in the vehicle. They immediately informed the zoo authorities about the incident who asked the driver to bring the safari vehicle back. The visitors said the tiger was wandering behind the tiger enclosure, but the zoo officials including Nandankanan zoo deputy director Chittaranjan Mishra, the range officer and the forester could not trace the tiger. According to the deputy director, the officials tried a lot to trace the tiger till Sunday evening but in vain. “We would try to find out the whereabouts of the tiger on Monday,” he assured.
laxmikant Dixit, a visitor from Kolkata, had shown a hazy photograph of a wandering zoo animal fuelling the speculation about the presence of the tiger in the forest area.
Notably, the Forest Department on January 27 had confirmed the movement of a tigress and its cub after tracing pugmarks near Manei Sahi of Jhumuka area under Chandaka forest range on the outskirts of the city. Earlier, the department officials on December 28 last year too had confirmed that the tigress and its cub were freely roaming around the Chandaka-Dampada sanctuary.