Maharashtra Forest Department staffers found the tiger buried near a farm.
The April jinx for the Maharashtra forest department continues. Exactly a year after the mysterious disappearance of the famous tiger Jai of Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary (UKWS) his three-year-old male cub, Srinivas, has been found dead on Thursday after being electrocuted accidentally in an electric fence setup for herbivores by a farmer.
As per the forest officials, Srinivas's carcas was exhumed from a farm in Maushi village in Nagbhid range located in the Bramhapuri division. The tiger's territory was around Paoni and Nagbhid ranges in Bhandara and Chandrapur district. “The radio collar that was strapped around its neck by Bilal Habib and his team of researchers from Wildlife Institute of India (WII) was found on April 19 after which a search operation was launched for the tiger. However after staff found tiger scat near a farm on Thursday and began enquiring with the locals and soon it led them to Mahadev Irpate, Shubham Uke and Uttam Irpate, who confessed that the tiger was killed due to the electric wire fence they had set up to protect their farm,” shared a forest official adding that they told the investigating team that they had no intention to kill the tiger and the fence was set for herbivores that damage the crop.
According to Brahmapuri deputy conservator of forests Kulraj Singh, the accused even informed the forest department that after they found that a tiger had been killed they were scared and decided to bury it close to their farms and even removed the collar and threw it away, which finally led to the dead tiger. “The post-mortem was conducted and the carcas has been cremated as per the procedure,” said Singh.
AT A GLANCE
Number of Deaths of Tigers in 2017
- 39 Tigers to have died in India till 27 April
- 13 Tigers to have died in April
- 2 Tiger to have died in Maharashtra due to electrocution
The death of Srinivas has also yet again ignited the collaring debate. “It's become a trend to blame radio collars for everything. What can a radio collar do to ensure a tiger is not electrocuted, it was an unfortunate incident and in fact, it was the collar led to the site,” said a wildlife expert.
“One tiger is killed every fourth day and at this pace, we will lose out our national animal sooner than we realise. Apart from various instances where collars have failed to work, this one goes to show that even after getting signals, the department could not do anything. Ideally, if the forest officials knew that Srinivas is in and around human habitation they should have begun patrolling to ensure there is no man-animal conflict,” said wildlife photographer Sarosh Lodhi, coordinator of Conservation Lenses and Wildlife (CLAW).
The tiger was named after the former Field Director of Pench Tiger Reserve M Srinivasa Reddy and has a cub brother Bittu that has also been collared and was last spotted in the Paoni area. Srinivas is the second tiger from Maharashtra to have died of electrocution as in January this year an adult tigress was found dead due to electrocution in Pench Tiger Reserve.
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 "Maharashtra, Tigers, Nagbhid, Paoni, Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Bhandara, Chandrapur, Tiger population, Maharashtra Fore")
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