In a major operation involving about 200 people, including professional snipers and using elephants, the Indian police managed to kill a tiger that devoured at least 9 people, causing panic among the residents in Champaran in the state of Bihar, eastern India.
The tiger was called "the human eater" after it devoured several people, as the number of its victims within one month was 6 people, including a woman and her 8-year-old child.
Even before the two recent deaths, the authorities described the tiger - believed to be a three- or four-year-old male - as a "man-eating", meaning it could be wiped out.
Previous attempts to neutralize the animal have failed.
The problem #Tiger in #Bihar's #Valmiki tiger reserve has been shot today.
Five gunshots.
A dead tiger, result of human-wildlife conflict, 'man eater' or not, makes people courageous enough to pull out tufts of it's fur @ntca_india @MilindPariwakam @wii_india.
Video rcvd on WA pic.twitter.com/q2qJGhMsy9
— Balu Pulipaka (@BaluPulipaka) October 8, 2022
"Two teams entered the forest on the back of two elephants yesterday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, and a third team waited at the point where we thought the tiger would come out, and we shot (...) to kill him there," local police chief Kiran Kumar told Agence France-Presse on Sunday.
While the villagers were striking tin containers, the team - made up of eight snipers and about 200 members of the forestry department - took nearly 6 hours to complete the operation, Kumar said.
Environmental activists attribute these cases to the rapid expansion of human settlements around forests and major wildlife routes, such as the habitats of elephants and tigers, which are a source of increased clashes between humans and animals in some parts of India.
About 225 people died in tiger attacks between 2014 and 2019 in India, according to government data.
These statistics revealed that more than 200 tigers were killed by illegal poachers or by electrocution between 2012 and 2018.
India has about 70% of the world's tigers, with a total of 2,967 tigers in the country, according to 2018 statistics.