The forest department has refused to accept the tiger that killed an elderly man in Madhya Pradesh's Indore as a man-eater. Meanwhile, the search for the tiger has intensified across the city with special emphasis in the military cantonment area.
The animal has been roaming the city from the military cantonment area of Mhow town to the surrounding forest for the last one and a half months. Ever since the tiger has hunted the elderly, there is an atmosphere of panic in the area. Despite the death of the elderly, the department has refused to consider the tiger as a man-eater. State Forest Minister Vijay Shah held a meeting with his departmental officers in Indore on Tuesday to review the ongoing campaign to find and save the tiger.
4 teams are engaged in search for the tiger
Shah said after the meeting, ' The death of an elderly man in a tiger attack in Mhow forest area is very sad. To ensure that such an incident does not happen again, 4 teams of the Forest Department are searching day and night for the tiger in a stretch of about 25 kilometers of this area.
Cameras and cages have also been installed in the forest. Once the tiger is detected, it will be sedated and transferred to a national park. Officials said the tiger had mauled 60-year-old Sunderlal, a resident of Malendi village in Mhow forest area, on Sunday morning when he had gone to graze cattle.
'The tiger is not a man-eater, because…'
Officials said the forest department found the half-eaten body of an elderly man in the forest and tiger footprints were found near the body. After the death of the elderly in the tiger attack, there is an atmosphere of anger and panic among the people of the area. The villagers as well as a section of the local media are calling the tiger a man-eater.
However, the state's Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) JS Chauhan said that no wild animal can be declared a man-eater on the basis of a single incident. He said, "The old man must have had a close encounter with the tiger in the forest and this person would not have got a chance to save himself." Many photographs were captured in CCTV.
Chouhan said that every possible effort is being made to save the tiger and if needed, the help of experts from tiger reserves will also be taken. Let us inform that the tiger was seen roaming in the military cantonment area of Mhow town on the night of May 7 and after its CCTV footage came to the fore, the movement of the tiger in the area was confirmed. The capture of the tiger is very important to get people out of the atmosphere of panic created after the death of the old man.
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