Tiger Authority dissatisfied with report on Kanha tiger death

New Delhi, Nov 17 (UNI) The National Tiger Conservation Authority might send its own team for a reinvestigation into the death of a tiger in the Kanha Tiger Reserve of Madhya Pradesh.

They have taken serious note of the fact that the incident was not reported to them by state and local officials.

The authorities, whom deaths of the endangered big cat in various cases of poaching, poisoning and accidents are causing serious worries, could know about the Kanha death only from media and other sources following which they enquired about it from the state authorities.

They are also not satisfied with the explantion of the Kanha officials that the death was caused by poisoning. According to the report received from them, the tiger died after drinking water from a waterhole that had been poisoned by villagers. The investigation by the Kanha authorities thus made it a case of animal-human conflict.

However, sources said the officials here were finding many loose ends in the story as the fish in the waterhole did not die, which puts several question mark on the water poisoning theory.

It was quite possible that the central authorities may go to Kanha to inquire into the killing.

After the Kanha incident, three more tigers died in Dudhwa forest reserve. An inquiry by central authorities has found drowning and vehicle hit as the causes.

A senior official who went to Dudwa told UNI that two bodies of tigers were found in a canal while one was found on the roadside.

A sudden rise in the level of water in the canal was found to be the most plausible reason for their drowning. Their bodies bore on injury marks.

The body found on the roadside also bore no injury mark which means that the animal was hit by a speeding vehicle and sustained some internal injury, the official said.

He said some measures were being takenb by Dudhwa authorities like installing speed regulators to prevent such incident in future.

UNI NAZ BDP DS1340