He killed nine times – including children |
‘Man-eating’ tiger shot in India
The “Champaran Man-Eater” is dead.
A tiger has been shot dead in eastern India after killing nine people, including several children.
According to a police spokesman, around 400 people were involved in the hunt for the predator: three police patrols on elephants, around 200 forest officials and several villagers. They made noise with tin cans to startle the tiger. Finally, the animal was killed with three shots.
“The tiger wasn’t scared because it didn’t try to run away when it was surrounded by our teams from all sides in the sugar cane field,” said Prabhat Kumur Gupta, chief game warden of the Indian state of Bihar, who “ Times of India“. “He dared to face the men with guns because he was surrounded by trained elephants and a large number of officers from the Forest Service, police and county government,” Gupta said.
Villagers around the Valmiki tiger sanctuary had not left their homes at night since the tiger killed its first victim in May. Most recently, the predator attacked and killed a woman and her eight-year-old son on Saturday. Its attacks on humans earned it the nickname “the cannibal of Champaran”.
Originally, the three-year-old male tiger was to be captured. When that failed, he was cleared to be shot. “Orders have been issued to kill the man-eating tiger that has caused deaths among the population,” the state government said in a statement.
Around 75 percent of all tigers in the world live in India. According to statistics, almost 225 people were killed by tigers in the country between 2014 and 2019. The reason is the expansion of human settlements in the habitat of the big cats.
(bw/afp)