NEW DELHI: The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has sought a report from the Madhya Pradesh forest department following complaints that the wrong tiger was tranquilised and captured in Seoni, Madhya Pradesh.TOI had reported on November 9 that an MP forest team, out to nab a tiger that has killed six people in six weeks, may have darted the wrong tiger near Pench Tiger Reserve, since another woman was killed by a tiger in the same area just three hours later.NTCA has now asked the MP forest department for a fact-check following a complaint from wildlife activist Capt Brajesh Bharadwaj.
Villagers say the darted tiger, which is around 12 years old and has a partially damaged canine, is only a cattle-lifter and not the one that has been killing humans.The complaint urges NTCA to conduct a thorough examination of the sequence of events leading from the initial human casualty and specifics of the identification that led to the mistaken darting of a tiger.
Bharadwaj has also asked for accurate identification of the two tigers that the forest department believes are responsible for the recent human killings.