The conflicts between human and big cats in India have been discussed and highlighted many times here. Despite many programs and money purred into this matter, the conflicts are getting in fact deeper with the ‘National Big Cat’ and the king of the jungle entering the scene. Yes, now its tiger that is directly confronting the human settlements in India creating panic in both wildlife lovers and common public.

The tigress that fell victim to AK-47 bulllets

During the last week of November, an adult tigress strayed out of the Kaziranga National Park of North-East India which is home to around 90 tigers.  The tigress created panic among the habitats living near by Kohora range of the National Park. The tigress not killed cattle of the villagers creating fear among all.

On 5th December, the tigress killed a pig of one villager and started eating in near by bush. It was witnessed by the villagers and informed the forest authority. The authority kept the tigress under notice and prepared to tranquilize the full grown tigress. While the villagers informed the police and also tried the flee it with crackers. The noise made the tigress nervous and cross the highway towards the other side of the jungle. In the mean time a team of Assam police also arrived at the location. The crowd created panic in the tigress too, and it started roaring. After sometime the tigress again came out and this time attacked one journalist and also one police personal armed with AK-47. He fired at the tigress on self defense. Injured with bullets, the tigress became weak and took a back step. But then another police personal fired at the tigress with his AK-47 and rained it with bullets. The tigress had no choice this time but to surrender to death.

Another sad incident! The death of the Royal bengal Tigress brought back peace into the locality among the panicking villagers. But the story shouldn’t have ended with 14 bullets inside a beautiful animal, in fact the National animal of India. The animal could have been saved with proper planning and with a little more effort. The bullets of an AK-47 should not be a solution or answer to the panic among the villagers.

This clearly proves how inadequate are the process in place to stop the human-animal conflict in the region. Its a now a grave matter, because after so much hype and money flown into the tiger projects, there are not sufficient actions are in place.

Hope as the “King of the Jungle” is involved now, the conflicts will get more attention. Unfortunately the poor villagers around the forests have suffered so much loss and more than that so many beautiful and precious animals have already lost their lives due to the negligence of a few authorities.

Acting in self-defense or in defense of another person is generally accepted as legal justification for killing a person in human civilized law. Unfortunately, the same may not be applicable to the innocent and rare animals. The dumb animals are given the worst punishments and treated brutally for any crime they make.

The above statements are based on recent human leopard conflicts in Indian sub-continent. The number of conflicts between human and the big cat are increasing day by day. Within a span of a month there are large number of news coming from various parts of the country. In most of the cases , the innocent and beautiful animal is killed to death brutally.

Incidents of 2011

We are covering some of the news came into the media and published in past one month. Read these and provide your comments whether the wild cats need justice or not!

On January 13th, a leopard was beaten to death by villagers at Gandarpur in Orissa state. A group of children from Gandarpur village while  playing  cricket near the village saw the leopard behind a bush. When they raised an alarm, the villagers rushed to the spot and started pelting stones at the animal. Desperate to free itself from the brutal attack, the leopard started running while launching a counter attack on the people, injuring four villagers in the process. But the villagers didn’t stop, they finally beat the Leopard mercilessly to death with sticks, iron rods and cricket bats.

Leopard killed in Gandarpur

On January 12th, in Haryana’s Faridabad, a homeless Leopard straying around attacked a woman and injured her. The mob got so angry that they searched for the Leopard all around the village and finally punished to death in a brutal manner. The angry mob even broke tranquilizer guns brought by rescue teams.

Brutally Killed Leopard of Faridabad

On the afternoon of January 9, a policeman shot dead a rampaging leopard to stop it from mauling a man who had stepped out of a bar in Maharashtra’s Karad city.

Leopard of Karad

On 20th January, two Leopards are found dead in Valsad of Guajarat. All but two nails of the male leopard were removed, as were the canines. The culprits had also cut off his tail and taken away some internal organs. The post-mortem of the female leopard revealed brain haemorrhage as the cause of death. Sad end to the wild beauties!

On January 20th, a leopard was killed in Udhampur when it was hit by a vehicle on Srinagar-Jammu highway.

The Leopard killed in Road-mishap

On 31st December, a leopard is killed in North Kashmir by wildlife authority. The leopard was suppose to be a man-eater killing six people. Its unfortunate that the authority didn’t use tranquilizers to catch the leopard.

The man-eater Leopard

Similarly on December 15th, Yuvraj of the erstwhile state of Utelia near Dhandhuka, Bhagirathsinh Vaghela, shot aleopard that was believed to have turned maneater. The cat was shot around 6.30pm in a sugarcane field near Areth village, near Valsad, where a leopard had killed a 75-year-old woman on Monday morning. Forest officials said the leopard returned to the spot where it had left the body on Monday evening and was brought down. But later, post mortem reports confirmed that the leopard was not a man-eater!

Leopard killed near Valsad

A leopard that caused scare among local residents was caught in a trap laid at Bhopal Pani (Ballawala) by Forest and Wildlife Department officials on 20th December. It was tranquilized and then caged. The poor animal was lucky enough to survive from the wrath of the mob!

Leopard trapped in Bhopalpur

These are few occurrences just in a month. The list goes long if look back more into past. Who will provide justice to these animals?

Wildlife experts want rapid response teams set up in sensitive areas across the country to deal with human-leopard conflicts. But Its the government who needs to take some action as soon as possible. The Government needs to study all aspects of this complex problem if the majestic feline is to co-exist peacefully with humans.