Tigress Avni's cubs spotted in Maharashtra's Yavatmal today

Mumbai, Nov 15: Two weeks after Tigress Avni was killed, the two cubs have been sighted in a forest in Maharashtra and could be rescued and rehabilitated, reports said on Thursday.

Maharashtra state's forestry department's AK Mishra said the cubs were "healthy and are surviving" and that specialists would assess whether they had acquired a taste for humans from their mother, reported news agency AFP.

"The cubs may or may not have become man-eaters, depending on their proximity to their mother when she attacked humans," it added.

The mother was shot dead in early November after being accused of killing more than a dozen villagers, capping off one of the country's most high-profile tiger hunts and angering conservation activists.

For more than three months, Forest Department officials were planning to catch her with the help of latest technology. Trained sniffer dogs, trap cameras, drones and a hang-glider, expert trackers, sharp-shooters and around 200 ground personnel were roped in for the task.

In October, an elephant that was part of a group hunting a man-eating tigress in Maharashtra ran astray overnight and trampled a woman to death.

In September this year, the Supreme Court had said Avni could be shot at sight, which prompted a flurry of online petitions seeking pardon for the tigress.

Animals rights organisation PETA India condemned the killing. Its Lead Emergency Response Coordinator, Meet Ashar, in a statement said, "Avni was killed illegally satisfying a hunter's lust for blood in possible contempt of court and in apparent violation of the Wildlife Protection Act and the guidelines of National Tiger Conservation Authority."

"This matter must be investigated and treated as a wildlife crime. Whether sanctioned by the state or not, nobody can be above the law. This is a dark day for our nation and we must hang out heads in shame now and again if this killing goes unpunished," the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals functionary said.