A five-year-old tiger spotted moving on a couple of occasions recently in the forest belt between Kathotia and Kerwan, touching the southern tip of Bhopal, whose first clear picture was taken by the camera trapping method last November, has been killed by poachers.
State principal chief conservator of forest and chief wildlife warden Pramod Kumar Shukla told this newspaper that after recovering the tiger’s body on Tuesday, the forest authorities had rounded up and interrogated a few persons from Kathotia village. Five of them, who have confessed the crime, have been arrested and would be produced in court on Thursday. Hunt is on for three others who are absconding. The tiger’s body was found in a decomposed state kept hidden under a natural stone shelter. The big cat was electrocuted and killed about three days ago by poachers, who had put a live electricity wire in the water hole. Villagers in this area had reported the sighting and movement of the slain tiger on several occasions since the second week of August 2011.
Bhopal chief conservator of forest S.S. Rajput has told mediapersons that a live electricity wire had been put in water-hole by few villagers to kill some herbivore and the tiger, who drank water from this water hole, got accidentally killed. He also said the poachers must have panicked and, hence, they hid the tiger’s body in the Kathotia forest.
This tiger was seen moving in forest track between Kerwan dam and Kathotia village lying on the southern periphery of Bhopal on November 2, 2011. This tiger had strayed into this territory from Ratapani Sanctuary where the tiger population had gone up by almost 70 per cent over the last few years.