Ace cricketer and former Team-India Test captain, Anil Kumble had a few anxious moments when a tiger charged a trained elephant, sending a young girl riding on it to the ground, during his recent safari in the Kahna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
An avid wildlifer and deputy chairman of the Karnataka State Board for Wildlife, Kumble was on an elephant’s back in the reserve when a tiger charged one of the two elephants in the safari. The girl riding the elephant fell off as the jumbo rushed after the tiger, but was luckily saved from the jaws of death by a quick-thinking mahout of the other elephant who came between her and the tiger, that later disappeared into the bushes. Kumble who saw the entire horrific incident, refused to comment on it when contacted, only saying, “I have my own views about it and I will put them down in a letter to the respective departments.”
Officials of the Kahna Tiger Reserve however, tried to play down the incident terming it as an accident, but wildlife experts blame what could have been a much worse episode on the Madhya Pradesh government’s Sher Darshan programme that assures tourists a tiger sighting in the dense jungles.