NEWS: India
Tiger shot dead after killing 9 people

Police shot dead a tiger after it killed at least nine peo­ple in Cham­paran, Bihar, India.

The ani­mal, dubbed the ‘Cham­paran man-eater’, was shot dead after being hunt­ed by about 200 police offi­cers and dis­trict offi­cials. Some police offi­cers rode ele­phants to patrol and search for them.

Male tigers were ter­ror­iz­ing com­mu­ni­ties around the Valmi­ki Tiger Reserve.

India is home to over 70% of the world’s wild tigers.

Indi­a’s tiger reserves (where tigers can live) are not expand­ing at the same rate as the tiger population.

As a result, some big cats are forced to rely on human-con­trolled land for sur­vival, result­ing in the loss of live­stock and some­times human life.

The oper­a­tion, led by the Bihar State Police, encir­cled a sug­ar cane field near the vil­lage of Sita­tra Bar­wa and hunt­ed down a three-year-old tiger dubbed T‑104.

Kumar Gup­ta, the region’s chief wildlife watch­dog, told the Times of India that the tiger was con­firmed to be “a threat to human life”.

Valmi­ki Tiger Sanc­tu­ary direc­tor Nesamani K said the final hunt to find the T‑104 began Sat­ur­day after news broke that a moth­er and cub had been killed in a tiger attack.

“It was a sleep­less night for the whole vil­lage,” Par­tu Mahat told the Hin­dus­tan Times. “Some banged stones against each oth­er, some banged tin con­tain­ers to keep the tigers away.”

Attempts to sub­due the tiger were unsuc­cess­ful, Gup­ta added, adding that the tiger “did­n’t feel any fear” sur­round­ed by the team.

Two teams with two ele­phants entered the for­est, while a third team wait­ed where author­i­ties thought tigers would appear.

The T‑104 was pho­tographed on Sat­ur­day at 15:15 local time.

A wildlife con­ser­va­tion offi­cer in Bihar said he had no infor­ma­tion to sug­gest the killing was car­ried out by anoth­er tiger.

Accord­ing to gov­ern­ment data released in 2019, between 40 and 50 peo­ple are killed by tigers each year.