A tigress that killed three people and brought life to a standstill in a section of the Nilgiris was shot dead by a team of forest and police officials near Kappachi village, around 15 km from Ooty, around 8 pm on Wednesday.
The tigress had entered the village and killed a cow an hour before it was shot. Villagers alerted a search team that rushed to the spot and launched combing operations, and finally shot it.
The tigress, aged nine years according to unconfirmed reports, had kept forest officials and residents of nearly 40 villages and hamlets on their toes for the past many days. Search teams had been combing the Doddabetta-Snowdown forest stretch for two weeks after the feline was confirmed a man-eater by forest officials. It is not yet clear why it turned a man-eater though.
The government had deployed nearly 150 people, divided into four teams, to trap or kill the animal. Kumki elephants were deployed to help them, and cameras mounted at numerous spots to track down the animal, which kept evading the foresters.
According to the search team, the tigress was found in a bushy area outside the village and tried to flee into the forest as they fired tranquilizer shots. “We shot several rounds. The animal was hurt but seemed to be moving for about 10 minutes before it died,” one of them said.
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