In a spine-chilling incident, a 20-year-old youth was on Tuesday mauled to death by a white tiger when he jumped into its enclosure at the Delhi Zoo.
Video footage of the horrific incident caught on mobile phone cameras by visitors showed that Vijay, the seven-year-old tiger, was initially clueless when he found the youth in his enclosure and both of them stood face to face for several minutes.
The incident also brought to the fore the lack of quick response mechanism in the zoo to rescue a person from such a situation by tranquilising the animal or by any other method.
Maqsood, a resident of Anand Parbat area with a history of mental illness, was scrounging himself against a wall as the wild cat looked menacingly at him from close quarters.
There were various accounts of how Maqsood fell into the tiger's enclosure. Some eyewitnesses claimed that he was leaning against the two-feet wall of the enclosure when he slipped into it.
National Zoological Park curator RA Khan, however, rules out the possibility of the man falling into the moat. “The enclosures of the zoo are designed in a way that nobody can fall into it. For the visitors it is a four-feet high wall and the moat inside is about 18 to 20 feet deep. One can get into the moat, only if one tries to do so,” said Khan.
Zoo officials and some other eyewitnesses said he crossed the iron fence preceding a brick wall and jumped into the enclosure.
"There is a stand-off barrier before the wall of the enclosure. He had crossed it at least two-three times and was repeatedly warned by the security guard stationed there. Meanwhile, some schoolchildren reached the spot and the guard's attention was diverted when he jumped in and landed 18 feet below in the dry moat," National Zoological Park curator R A Khan said.
The incident, the first of its kind in the zoo's history, took place around 1pm.
Some eyewitnesses claimed security guards at the zoo could do nothing to help the youth when he was being dragged away by the tiger as they did not have tranquiliser guns.
"The youth was sitting before the tiger in such a position like he was pleading to him to spare his life and the tiger patted him on his face several times with his paws," said one of the eyewitnesses.
It was only when the spectators started shouting in order to divert the tiger's attention and the security guards were beating his cage in the arena signaling him to return in it when the tiger turned violent, caught the youth by his neck and dragged him away.
"People made noise by shouting and screaming in order to divert the tiger's attention, but I did not see anyone throwing stones at the animal.
"The tiger kept hitting the man with his paws for almost 15 minutes while the man was sitting scared in front of him. The tiger then caught hold of his neck and dragged the man through the whole arena until he was dead," said Himanshu, an eyewitness who made a PCR call about the incident.
The tiger did not feed on the youth after killing him.
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