After 2-day hide-&-seek, Kultali tiger returns to forest
Times of India | 9 January 2025
12 Kolkata: The tiger that entered Kultali Moipith's Kishorimohanpur village under South 24 Pgns forest division on Monday and later shifted to North Jagaddal on Tuesday, returned to the forest late last night.
DFO Nisha Goswami said it has returned to the forest of Ajmalmari 11 compartment from where it came. "From the pugmarks on the banks of Makri river on Wednesday morning, we came to know that it has returned to the forest after crossing the river," she added.
Earlier on Monday, net fencing was put up at KishoriMohanpur to separate the village from a forest patch where the tiger was hiding. But the big cat managed to cross over the net fencing and entered North Jagaddal village.
"We placed a trap cages with goat bait and burst crackers to drive the tiger away. It finally returned to the forest late at night," said an official.
But villagers are still in panic and worried over its return.
Earlier on Dec 20, last year, a class 9 student was injured in Moipith's Bhubaneswari panchayat area after a tiger entered a nearby village and attacked him while he was speaking on his mobile phone.
Between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022, at least eight incidents of tiger straying were reported from both the tiger reserve and divisional forest areas.
In 2023, Two incidents of tiger straying were reported from Sridharpur and Upendranagar areas, both in Kultali. In all these cases the big cats either returned to the forest or were captured and released back in the wild.
Meanwhile, at least five villagers were killed in tiger attack last year in the mangroves after they entered the forest on illegal fishing trips. These are official data and actual figures may be higher.
This year, a villager has already been killed in tiger attack during such an illegal fishing trip. He has been identified as Ganesh Kahar of Mollakhali. The incident took place in Choragajikhali.