advertisement
Should a 'man-eater' tigress be tranquilized or shot dead? This peculiar question has come in the way of the forest department which has been finding it tough to catch the tigress that has already claimed at least nine lives in the Ralegaon forest area of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra.
The forest department has claimed that the six-year-old tigress, identified as T1, along with two of her nine-month-old cubs, has consumed 60 percent of a human corpse, that has led it to declare her as a 'man-eater'.
The question whether the tigress, which claimed three lives last month, should be tranquilized or shot and killed reached before the Supreme Court Tuesday, 11 September.
The apex court heard the petitions challenging the Bombay Hight Court's recent decision giving a go-ahead to the forest department to implement its order to tranquilize or shoot the tigress.
While the petitioners claimed that it has not been established that whether the corpse was eaten by the tigress and her cubs, the forest department maintained that the big cat was responsible for at least nine deaths.
The department said they were trying hard to get to a 'touching distance' of the tigress to dart her with a tranquilizer for the last six months, but have failed.
The petitioners urged a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta that if the tigress was shot dead, both her cubs would not be able to survive in the forest.
When the counsel for one of the petitioners said the forest department has roped in a "sharp shooter" to kill the tigress straightaway, the bench said "We have said that they (forest department) will be bound by their order".
Senior advocate Anand Grover, appearing for another petitioner, told the court that even if people entering the forest area get killed by the tigress, that does not make her a 'man-eater'.
"A distinction has to be made between a tigress killing a human and a habitual man -eater," he said.
Responding to the query, the counsel representing the forest department said the post-mortem report talks of a puncture wound on the neck of the victim and the tigress and her two cubs are responsible for the kill.
He also claimed that this tigress has killed nine humans and the villagers have seen her along with the cubs near the spot where the incident took place.
"There are puncture wounds on the neck (of one of the victims). Bite marks are also there. Pug marks are also there," he said, adding that from 22 September last year till January end this year, six persons have been killed by the tigress.
Grover, however, said the tigress cannot be held responsible if people entered the forest and are killed by animals.
He said that DNA profiling, which could have established whether the tigress had killed these persons and also eaten them, has not even been done.
In February, the high court had stayed the shoot order against the tigress after it was found that she was moving along with her two newly-born cubs.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)