A wanted tiger, known as the "man-eater of Champaran" and for killing at least nine people in Bihar, India, was shot down during an operation involving hundreds of people.
As a result, a widespread tiger hunt occurred over the weekend and led to the death of the wild animal.
The event alone is one of the largest operations in India against a single tiger, whose last victims were a mother and her son.
Man-Eater of Champaran
The Indian police shot dead a tiger that was responsible for killing at least nine people in Champaran district in Bihar state.
The man-eater of Champaran was killed after a hunt was carried out by approximately 200 members of the police forces and district officials.
Some police officers patrolled while riding elephants to find it. The beast is known for terrorizing communities at the Valmiki Tiger Reserve.
The mass tiger hunt lasted for seven hours on Saturday, October 8, and was led by the Bihar police, who surrounded a sugarcane field near the Sitaltola Baluwa village to killed the three-year-old tiger known as "T-104," which likely stands for tiger no. 104.
The special operation needed to come to an end since T-104, which was identified as "dangerous to human lives," was gunned down by Bihar police jawan at 3:15 p.m. local time on Saturday, according to chief wildlife warden Bihar Prabhat Kumar Gupta, who told the Times of India.
The operation was triggered shortly after the news broke out that the man-eating tiger mauled to death a woman named Parvati Devi, 35, and her son Shivam Yadam, 8, from Balua village.
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India Tiger Attacks
India is home to over 70% of the world's wild tigers, including the ferocious Bengal tiger.
The South Asian country's tiger reserves, protected areas where the wild animals can live have not expanded at the same rate of its population growth.
This has led to some of the big cats to stumble on human settlements for survival, including preying on livestock and sometimes on humans, the BBC reported.
Tigers in India kill around 40 to 50 people each year, according to government data in 2019 by India's Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change.
Between 2015 and 2018, the data showed that the following Indian states have incurred tiger attacks:
- Assam
- Karnataka
- Kerala
- Madhya Pradesh
- Maharashtra
- Mizoram
- Odisha
- Tamil Nadu
- Uttar Pradesh
- Uttarakhand
- West Bengal
Based on the government tally, the state with the highest number of human fatalities was recorded in Maharashtra, having six deaths in 2015, six in 2016, 24 in 2017, and 15 in 2018.
Tiger attacks are common across India, especially in areas where there is a close proximity between tiger population and human settlements.
Considered to be an extreme form of human-wildlife conflict, tiger attacks across the nation have been increasing in recent years.
In April 2022, the Indian government stated a total of 108 people died nationwide due to tiger attacks between 2019 and 2021, the Times of India reported.
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