The Uttar Pradesh forest department has lodged a First Information Report against six people and a few unidentified people in connection with the killing of a tigress in Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, reported Hindustan Times on Tuesday.
The tiger reserve’s field director Ramesh Pandey said the FIR was filed on Monday, a day after villagers mowed the tigress down and beat her to death. She had killed a 50-year-old man who had trespassed into the tiger reserve.
Pandey said that an autopsy showed that villagers had inflicted injuries on the animal before and after its death. They had also tried to pull out its claws and teeth. Pandey also ruled out that the tigress was a man-eater and said action will be taken against those who killed her in the core zone of the tiger reserve.
The field director said the tigress had grown “sluggish and irritated due to a parasite load” in its abdominal area. A porcupine quill was recovered from the animal’s nasal cavity and throat. “Owing to irritation in its body, the tigress preferred to stay in one place and it only attacked those whom it feared was approaching it.”
Inspector Atar Singh confirmed that the First Information Report was lodged at Sehramu in Pilibhit district. All those named in the FIR are residents of Chaltua village near which the incident took place. Chaltua village is part of the Kishanpur sanctuary.
Singh said the FIR was lodged under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act and the Indian Penal Code, including Sections 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (armed with deadly weapon).
“The accused are on the run but police have formed special teams to trace and arrest them,” Singh told The Times of India.
The incident follows the Maharashtra forest department’s killing of tigress Avni, who was believed to be a “man-eater”, on Friday. The National Tiger Conservation Authority on Monday said it will conduct its own inquiry if the report it has commissioned from Maharashtra’s forest department on the killing of the tigress is unsatisfactory.
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