A tiger has been shot dead by police in the Indian state of Bihar’s Champaran, killing at least nine people.
Nicknamed the “man-eater of Champaran”, the beast was killed by around 200 police officers and district officials after the hunt. Some officials were patrolling on elephants to find him.
The male tiger was terrorizing communities around the Valmiki Tiger Reserve.
India is home to more than 70% of the world’s wild tigers.
India’s tiger reserves – protected areas where the animals can live – have not grown as much as the tiger population.
This has forced some big cats to move into human-dominated landscapes to survive, killing livestock and sometimes killing people.
The operation was led by the Bihar Police, which cordoned off a sugarcane field near Sitlatula Balwa village and killed a three-year-old tiger, identified as T-104.
The region’s chief wildlife warden, Kumar Gupta, told The Times of India that the tiger has been identified as “dangerous to human life”.
Valmiki Tiger Reserve Director Nismani K said the final search to find T-104 had begun on Saturday, soon after news broke that a mother and her cub had died in a tiger attack. .
“It was a sleepless night for the entire village,” Paltu Mehto told Hindustan Times. “While some of us continued to throw stones at each other, others kept hitting tin cans to drive the tiger away.”
Mr Gupta added that efforts to calm the animal failed and the tiger showed a “total lack of fear” when surrounded by teams.
Two teams, two on elephants, went into the forest, and the third team stood where the authorities thought the tiger would break out.
The T-104 was shot down at 15:15 local time on Saturday.
The Bihar wildlife warden said there was no information available to suggest that the people were killed by another tiger.
According to official data published in 2019, between 40 and 50 people are killed by tigers every year.
