Forest department brings in ‘expert hunter’ to shoot tigress Avni, while two activists file a plea in Bombay high court seeking stay on the elimination order.
New Delhi: There’s no let-up in the efforts to kill ‘man-eater’ tigress Avni, officially known as T-1, with the Maharashtra Forest Department even bringing in ‘expert hunter’ Nawab Shafat Ali Khan to track and shoot the big cat.
What seems to have been conveniently forgotten is that the Bombay High Court and later the Supreme Court gave their go-ahead to the manhunt for the tigress with a caveat: Killing her should be the last resort and efforts should be made to first tranquilise and capture the big cat.
However, all the department and Khan seem to be doing is to try and locate the tigress — some of their moves like using the services of golfer Jyoti Randhawa and his two ‘tracker’ dogs and spraying Calvin Klein cologne in the area in the hope the tigress will be attracted to it bordered on hilarious — so that she can be gunned down.
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While the tigress has been awarded death sentence for having killed five villagers in the last couple of years, latest information suggests this claim has several gaps.
On Tuesday, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, while hearing a plea by wildlife activists Jerryl Banait and Sarita Subramaniam seeking a stay on plans to kill the ‘man-eater’ and instead capture her alive, asked the forest department to explain why have there been no attacks by the tigress since 28 August if she is a habitual man-eater.
The forest department was also served two separate legal notices by environmentalist Ajay Dubey and lawyer Gaurav Bansal in the last one month.
The latest plea
In the plea, Banait alleged that the efforts of the forest department are in contravention to the 11 September order of the Supreme Court.
“The forest department appointed Khan to shoot Avni on 10 September, a day before the apex court ruled on the matter,” said Banait.
Banait and Subramaniam sought the removal of the shooter in their plea. Khan and his team have been interfering with the operation, flouting the provisions of the law, submitted the plea.
It added that Khan has been “in news for several years for all the wrong reasons, and has been termed as a controversial shooter.”
Banait also challenged Avni’s doomed status as a man-eater and said the deaths attributed to the tigers could be chance encounters.
“There is nothing to indicate that the pattern of deaths linked to the tigers make them man-eaters,” he said.
“The 13 deaths since June 2016 have been illegally attributed to the tigers without any conclusive evidence, said Banait.
Death warrant
The order to eliminate the big cat was passed on 4 September by A.K. Misra, principal chief conservator of Maharashtra forests (wildlife), as he declared the tigress to be a man-eater.
According to Misra’s order, nine deaths were reported between July 2017 and August 2018. Of these, five were attributed to the tigress with at least three deaths recorded over a period of 24 days in August.
The decision to declare Avni a man-eater and eliminate her came after the three cases in August.
“The efforts to tranquilise and capture T-1 tigress will be continued and if unsuccessful, it shall be eliminated by shooting to avoid any further loss of human life,” Misra said in his order.
“The cubs of T-1 tigress will be tranquilised and shifted to rescue centre,” said the order.
The cubs were born days after the first order to eliminate Avni was passed by the forest department on 29 January. The Bombay High Court stayed the order on 31 January. In February, the forest department passed another order — this time to simply tranquilise and capture her.
Misra’s September order was unsuccessfully challenged by way of appeals in the Bombay High Court and, then, the Supreme Court.
Legal notices
Two legal notices have also been issued to the forest department since its September order challenging the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) adopted to capture the tigress.
Bhopal-based environmentalist Ajay Dubey filed the first on 15 September and Delhi-based advocate Gaurav Bansal filed the other on 9 October.
On 11 October, in response to Dubey’s legal notice, the forest department said there was no merit to his allegations and asserted that it was only complying with the apex court orders. The department also “denied in totality” the non-compliance of the SOP as issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).
Speaking to ThePrint, Dubey said it will be interesting to see how the high court reacts to the new petition.
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“It cannot go against the top court order, which essentially upholds Misra’s warrant,” said Dubey.
“Unless the new petition has any new evidence that could affect the outcome, the only end result I see is a change in the way the tigress is being hunted and hopefully she will be tranquilised and not shot,” added Dubey.
The department, however, hasn’t responded to Bansal yet.
The tigress has been evading a search operation being carried out by over 200 personnel, including a sharpshooter, trap cameras, thermal drones and elephants.
The Bombay High Court will continue hearing Subramaniam and Banait’s plea Friday.
Any person or organisation that aids and protects a dangerous animal that is known to kill human beings can be arrested and jailed for abetment to murder !
No animal – least of all a big cat – should die because of its predatory behaviour even if the victims have been humans.