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In India, a Bullet Finally Ends a Man-Eating Tiger’s Kill Spree In India, a Bullet Finally Ends a Man-Eating Tiger’s Killing Spree
(about 3 hours later)
NEW DELHI — A man-eating tigress that stalked the hills of central India, eluded capture many times and was believed to have killed 13 people was finally felled by a bullet on Friday night, officials said. NEW DELHI — The hunt is over.
The tigress, given the name T-1 by Indian rangers, had been hunted for months in a huge, military-style operation in the central state of Maharashtra, which at one point involved gunmen mounted on elephants. A man-eating tiger that stalked the hills of central India for over two years, who eluded capture many times and was suspected of killing at least 13 villagers, was felled by a bullet on Friday night, officials said.
Wildlife activists had tried to save the endangered tiger’s life, arguing against villagers in the area who had been terrorized by T-1 and wanted her dead. The dispute reached India’s Supreme Court, which ruled that the rangers should try to tranquilize her — but if that proved impossible, then to kill her. The plan had been to tranquilize the female tiger, called T-1. But according to the hunters who tried to capture her, she roared and charged after being hit by a tranquilizer dart at short range, and there was no choice but to shoot her dead.
That is exactly what happened, according to a statement issued on Saturday by the Maharashtra Forest Department. The statement said the tiger, after being struck with a tranquilizer dart, charged the hunters and was shot dead. Villagers in the area terrorized by T-1 (forest rangers had given her the name) erupted in joy when they heard about her death, shooting off firecrackers, passing out sweets and pumping their fists in the air.
During her killing spree, which lasted more than two years, T-1 had seemed especially clever. Whenever forest guards drew close, she slipped into the dense underbrush and disappeared. She recently had two cubs, which made her capture even riskier and more complicated. Wildlife activists were furious.
The hunt mounted by the Indian authorities in recent weeks involved scores of forest guards, police officers, remote camera sensors, jeeps, bulldozers (to clear away the bush) and five Indian elephants, with sharpshooters mounted on their backs. (The elephants were later withdrawn from the hunt, after one of them killed someone.) Hunters even tried attracting the tigress with men’s cologne. “This is a coldblooded murder,” said Jerryl Banait, an animal rights advocate who had gone all the way to India’s Supreme Court in an attempt to force the authorities to spare the tiger’s life and capture her instead.
The process was complicated by bureaucratic infighting, not to mention the tall, bushy grasses produced at the end of the monsoon season, which are perfect for tigers to hide in. For months, the noose had been tightening around T-1. Hundreds of forest rangers fanned out across the jungles of central Maharashtra State, combing the bush for tiger tracks, scat, stray hairs, long scratches on trees and anything that might reveal where she was lurking.
Another complicating factor was an clash of egos between the rangers and government veterinarians on one side and one of India’s most celebrated hunters, Nawab Shafat Ali Khan, who had been recruited by some government officials, on the other. The operation grew and grew, eventually encompassing a heat-seeking drone, more than a hundred remote cameras and a team of specially trained Indian elephants with sharpshooters mounted on their backs. It became one of the biggest, longest and most expensive tiger hunts in India in recent memory.
The veterinarians and Mr. Khan blamed each other for botching earlier capture attempts. In mid-September, Mr. Khan left the hunt in a huff, but he returned after the elephants were withdrawn. Three things made it especially hard.
This is what happened on Friday night, according to the forest department: One, T-1 was a mother of two young cubs, and the authorities did not want to harm the young tigers.
Around 6:45 p.m., people traveling near the village of Borati called forest officials to say that they had spotted a tiger prowling on the roadside. Three staff members and Asghar Ali Khan, the son of Mr. Khan, who was not in the area on Friday, stationed themselves nearby in a truck. Two, the grass was high and bushes overgrown (the monsoon rains have ended only recently).
Later in the evening, once they were able to identify the tigress as T-1, one member of the team hit her with a tranquilizer dart, the statement said. Three, T-1 was unusually crafty.
T-1 moved back, then charged at the vehicle. In a “reflex action of self-defense,” Asghar Ali Khan raised his gun and shot her from about 30 feet away. Tiger experts say she had benefited from all the failed attempts to catch her and knew how to slink through the bush undetected, sometimes just a few steps ahead of the teams of rangers and police officers looking for her.
“The tigress died on the spot,” the statement said. Her body was taken to Nagpur, a larger city nearby, for a postmortem examination. “She has learned from all these botched capture operations,’’ said Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, a famous tiger hunter who the authorities had called in to help. “We’ve made her very smart. Brilliant, actually.”
Asghar Ali Khan was not immediately available for comment. The break may have come from a surprise source: a bottle of Obsession cologne.
Questions are already circulating about what will happen to T-1’s cubs, and about whether the decision to use bullets was made too hastily. Obsession (a popular men’s fragrance in the 1990s) contains civetone, a compound originally derived from the scent glands of a civet and proven to make wildcats go gaga. In areas where it’s been sprayed, cats roll around in it, and they take huge sniffs and luxuriate in the smell for several minutes.
Jerryl Banait, an activist who was involved in filing the Supreme Court petition, said by telephone that protocol was not properly followed and that Asghar Ali Khan had not been authorized to shoot the tigress. “This is a coldblooded murder,” he said. Last month, the Indian rangers started using a few spurts of Obsession on bushes here and there, hoping to draw T-1 out. On Friday afternoon, the rangers sprayed some Obsession and tiger urine in an area where she was believed to be hiding.
T-1’s first known victim was killed in 2016 — an older woman who was found facedown in a cotton field, huge claw marks dug into her back. The next was a farmer, his left leg completely torn off. A few hours later, villagers saw a female tiger trotting down the road. People began to panic. The authorities dispatched teams to evacuate nearby cotton fields.
The killings continued for more than two years, sowing panic. In mid-August, the mauled body of Vaghuji Kanadhari Raut, a cattle herder, was found near a rural highway. Mr. Khan’s son, Asghar, also a hunter, rushed out with a team of rangers. They were using a small open jeep. They spotted a female tiger for a few fleeting seconds moving through the bushes. Tiger stripes are like fingerprints; each pattern is unique. From the stripes they could tell that the tiger was T-1.
What was especially frightening about that attack was that Mr. Raut had been standing in the middle of a ring of cattle when he was tugged down by the neck. None of his cows were touched. He was believed to have the 12th victim. One ranger fired a dart. The dart hit. But, according to the authorities, T-1 moved back, roared loudly and charged the open jeep. Asghar Khan then fired a bullet from a high-powered rifle. The authorities said it was in “self-defense.’’
Based on DNA tests, images from remote camera traps, numerous spottings and tiger tracks, the authorities have pinned at least 13 killings on T-1, who was believed to have been around 5 years old. She consumed chunks of flesh from several people she killed, and tiger experts say she clearly developed a taste for people, as opposed to killing them because she felt threatened. ”We would have lost a few men had we tried to save her,’’ said Mr. Khan’s father, Nawab.
It’s extremely unusual for a single tiger to have attacked that many people, which is why the authorities declared her a man-eater and mounted the full-scale hunt. Previously, young men in the nearby villages — tiger vigilantes, essentially — had patrolled with torches and bamboo sticks hoping to find her. The bullet hit her underside, and she died on the spot. Photos show her with a big red hole in her stomach. Officials are now performing an autopsy.
A crafty man-eating tiger on the loose might sound like something out of a Kipling story. But it’s actually a very real — and growing — problem in today’s India. Asghar Khan was not immediately available for comment.
The country’s effort to protect tigers, in a way, is a victim of its own success. India’s critically endangered tiger population is soaring. Closer monitoring, new technology and stricter wildlife laws have led to a sharp increase in the tiger count, from 1,411 in 2006 to an estimated 2,500 today. But the rising numbers have led to increased conflict. Questions are circulating about whether the decision to use bullets was made too hastily. Sarita Subramaniam, another wildlife activist (and a dentist), who had also gone to court several times to try to save T-1’s life, said on Saturday that she was “in denial.’’
India’s human population and its economy have been rapidly growing as well, steadily filling in rural areas with farms, roads, and mushrooming towns. Many tigers are now running out of space. ”It’s state-sponsored legalized hunting of a voteless and speechless tigress mother,’’ she said.
They’re spilling out of their dedicated reserves, roaming along highways and skulking through crowded farmland in search for territory, mates and prey (such as antelope, wild pigs, stray cattle and, yes, sometimes people). Dr. Subramaniam bristled at the designation of T-1 as a man eater.
”She was doing what any mother would do,’’ Dr. Subramaniam said. “She was simply trying to defend her cubs and her territory.’’
But there’s little doubt that T-1 was a dangerous wild animal.
Her first known victim was killed in 2016 — an older woman who was found facedown in a cotton field, huge claw marks dug in her back. The next was a farmer, his left leg torn off.
The killings continued for more than two years, sowing panic. In August, the mauled body of Vaghuji Kanadhari Raut, a cattle herder, was found near a rural highway.
What was especially frightening about that attack was that Mr. Raut had been standing in the middle of a ring of cattle when he was tugged down by the neck. None of his cows were touched. He was believed to have been the 12th victim.
Based on DNA tests, images from remote camera traps, numerous spottings and tiger tracks, the authorities have pinned at least 13 killings on T-1, who was believed to have been around 5 years old.
She consumed chunks of flesh from several people she killed, and tiger experts say she clearly developed a taste for humans, as opposed to killing them because she felt threatened. Many people in this area stayed away from their fields and suffered economic losses because of it.
A crafty man-eating tiger on the loose may sound like something out of a Kipling story. But it’s a very real — and growing — problem in India today.
The country’s effort to protect tigers, in a way, is a victim of its own success. India’s critically endangered tiger population is soaring. Closer monitoring, new technology and stricter wildlife laws have led to a sharp increase in the tiger count, from 1,411 in 2006 to an estimated 2,500 today.
Many tigers are now running out of space, spilling out of their dedicated reserves, roaming along highways and skulking through crowded farmland.
T-1 never lived in a dedicated tiger reserve; 30 percent of India’s tigers don’t. She roamed a forested area of about 60 square miles just on the edge of busy farmland near the town of Pandharkawada. Even if she had lived, according to the authorities, T-1 could never have been reintroduced into the wild.T-1 never lived in a dedicated tiger reserve; 30 percent of India’s tigers don’t. She roamed a forested area of about 60 square miles just on the edge of busy farmland near the town of Pandharkawada. Even if she had lived, according to the authorities, T-1 could never have been reintroduced into the wild.
Few villagers in this area expressed anything but joy that she was gone.
“Now our lives will be back to normal,” said Hidayat Khan, who lives in the area where T-1 killed several people. “We can go to our fields and do our work.”
But, he added, the cubs are still out there.
The authorities have not said what will happen to them, and some tiger experts say that perhaps the young animals have grown accustomed to eating human flesh.
On Saturday, villagers spotted one of the cubs climbing a hill, near where T-1 had died.