Tiger conservation took a major hit when senior forest officials found the president of the local Eco (logical) Samiti carrying four tiger paws to the house of a local tantric in order to conduct a special puja in the Chindwara district of Madhya Pradesh. The tiger paws had been hacked off a six-month old female cub by the president with the help of three forest chowkidars on June 10 in the Pench National Park.
The DFO south Chindwara had sighted the tigress along with her three cubs on June 9. Finding that one of the cubs was looking weak, he asked the forest guards to beef up patrolling in order to over see her well-being.
The chowkidars claim they found her dead body in the forests the following day. Local forest officials confirm that the mother tigress who was suckling her two remaining cubs had escaped into the dense vegetation.
Instead of reporting the death of the female cub, the cub was taken to a large boulder where its paws were chopped off while the remaining carcass was burned. The forest officials have found the burnt carcass on June 21 and have arrested nine villagers. Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, points out that this is the 20th tiger death reported in India since January 2010 and comes at a time when a nation wide Census is being conducted to ascertain whether the tally of 1411, from the count four years ago, has gone up or down.
Earlier this year a seven-year old tiger was found dead in the Pench National Park. The post-mortem proved conclusively that the animal had been poisoned. During winter, two tiger cubs had died of cold in the same park located in the Seoni district of southern Madhya Pradesh.
Earlier this month, a three-year-old tigress with three cubs had been hit by a jeep of a forest official in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, (475 miles from Nagpur) while trying to cross a forest road. Initially, the three officials had denied any involvement in its death but subsequently admitted that an “accident” had occurred.
Local villagers continue to believe that the tiger parts have healing powers and are in great demand by local tantrics.