Chennai: The Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Tamilnadu forest department not to shoot down the elusive tiger on the prowl near Gudalur and Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) areas.
The First Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and PD Audikesavalu said the Forest department instead, should trap the tiger without causing disturbance to other wild animals, and provide necessary treatment to it.
The tiger T-23, carrying injuries and has been eluding the trap for the last ten days, has so far killed four people. While the body of the first three persons remained intact, it had eaten the flesh of the fourth person, raising suspicion that it has turned turned man-eater, which was denied by the forest department.
When the two Public Interest Litigations (PIL) filed by UP-based animal welfare activist Sangeeta Dogra and People for Cattle in India, seeking a direction to the authorities to capture the tiger alive, came up for hearing, the court said that the forest department should not immediately kill the tiger as it might not be a man-eater.
Appearing for the Forest department, Government Pleader P Muthukumar assured the court that they have not decided to kill the elusive tiger which has been roaming inside the estates and forests in the Gudalur region.
After hearing the submission, the court ordered notice to the State government and directed it submit a detailed report about the operation in two weeks.
Meanwhile, the eleventh day of the operation to locate and tranquillise tiger T23 in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) started today morning, with the Forest Department sources saying they are hopeful of catching it soon.
Teams on elephant-back and on foot combed through the Masinagudi and Singara forest ranges in search of the tiger.
More logistics support came in from the neighbouring forest divisions in Kerala and Karnataka, with the latter also despatching a trained sniffer dog.
Tamilnadu Chief Wildlife Warden Shekar Kumar Niraj issued an order to hunt āT23ā, a tiger, which is said to have killed four persons so far, including a 55-year-old man on Friday, in Nilgiris district after concluding that the big cat has ābecome very dangerousā to human life in the area.
The order was issued after a week-long effort by the Forest Department to catch the tiger alive failed. The Forest Department came under severe pressure from locals after the news of the tiger fatally attacking its fourth target spread like wildfire. Villagers in Masinagudi and Gudalur complain that the tiger has been wreaking havoc in the area.