Now, villagers come in line of fire

The tigress was within a range of 50 meters when spotted by forest officials

The elusive killer tigress once again escaped on Monday after being sighted the second time by the forest officials, as this time around the villagers accompanying the teams happened to be in the line of fire. 

The tigress has allegedly killed 22 people in past two years is hiding away from a team of forest officials who are on her lookout in the Brahmapur forests to either kill or capture her follwing an order from the chief conservator of forest to this effect.

Two weeks ago, the team of police and forest officials on the trail of the killer tigress could not get her as the other team was in the line of fire.

“Our team sighted the tigress twice during the day but could not open fire as the accompanying villagers came in the line of fire,” said forest officer Hrishikesh Ranjan of Brahmapuri division.

The tigress was well within a range of 50 meters when spotted by the forest officials. The search teams on the tigress’ trail had followed the pug marks along the canal between Sonapur and Dhamangaon villages after spotting the big cat near Sonapur village about two weeks ago. 

“Though we welcome help from people in tracking down the tigress, sometimes,
it proves a hurdle, too,” Ranjan said.

Meanwhile, Dehradoon-based senior scientist at Wildlife Institute of India Niranjan Basu arrived at Brahmapuri on Monday to help the search teams  track and identify the
problem animal.

“We have collected the animal’s scat and hair samples. A DNA fingerprint will be prepared after analysis of the samples which will be used for comparison of samples to be collected in future,” Ranjan said.