Cattle grazer killed by tiger in Bandipur

Gulbarga: Weeks after the capture of the maneater tiger of Bandipur,  another  villager grazing  cattle  inside the Bandipur Tiger Reserve was killed by a tiger on Friday. His brother, who was with him, managed to escape and inform the other villagers, who in turn alerted the forest officials.

A team of forest officers and villagers which rushed to the spot,  found Javaraya, 50, 500 metres inside the forest boundary  in  the Maddur range of the reserve, with  his stomach region, where the tiger appeared to have fed,  in tatters. The victim’s brother,  Lokesh, said he was sitting and talking to Javaraya inside the reserve while grazing cattle when the tiger attacked  from the  back, taking the latter by surprise.  Not waiting to see anymore, he fled, he added.

Forest officials are, however,  not convinced the tiger is a maneater as they think it could have mistaken the villager for an animal from the back as he was wearing a coffee colour shirt and  was seated on the ground.

Angry villagers refused to let the forest officers leave, blocking their vehicles . The forest staff from the  Maddur tribal resettlement camp had a hard time  pacifying the villagers,  who demanded compensation for the victim's family.  Although under the law if someone dies inside a forest area, his family is not entitled to compensation,the department has in the  past paid  upto Rs 5 lakh to families of such victims on humanitarian grounds.

Meanwhile, concerned by the latest death, wildlife experts are once again calling for a ban on cattle grazing in wildlife habitats. "The tiger reserves are meant for the big cats and elephants.  Increased human intervention  in these areas will  only increase man-elephant conflict," warned a wildlife conservationist.