Ek Tha Tiger and this is the story of how he was murdered. Since tigers are not known to interact with human media, the story is devoid of a decisive perspective.
***
Jean Paul Sartre would have culled an existential hero out of him. He was a gypsy by compulsion. Throughout the ten years of his life, he never managed to establish a territory of his own, always driven out by his stronger peers. With a total length of 246 cm, he was considerably undersized. He had relatively small genitals. One of his canines was missing, two were broken. His lungs, for all intents and purposes, were dysfunctional—infected to a degree of seventy percent with paragonimus. He could not chase his prey; he could not roar. For the last nine days of his life he was starving; the post mortem could only find an alimentary canal full of tapeworms. His identity was fiercely debated; some said he was somebody else; some said he was a she. He was a victim of the rumour mill, of an unscientifically carried out census, of a vote bank democracy that bayed for his blood. When the bullet shot that claimed him pierced through his debile body, all he could do was wag his tail thrice.
NHT-243 must have had a sense for bad timing. In the second week of November 2012, when he first ventured out into the fringes of human habitat, a society that was simmering with paranoia and animosity about the rumoured conversion of its home ground into a tiger reserve had found a perfect specimen to shower their ire upon. A tiger census report that came out in February 2012, had reported the presence of 78 tigers—67 adults and 11 cubs—in Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WSS), spread over 344 sq.km and consisting of four ranges—Sulthan Bathery, Kurichiyat, Tholpetti and Muthanga. The census was seen in the context of the Western Ghats Expert Ecology Panel (WGEEP) report submitted by Dr. Madhav Gadgil committee which proposed WSS to be made an Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ).
Rumours
about a possible tiger reserve that first started doing the rounds when a ban
was imposed in 2010 on the night traffic through the Bandipur National Park on the Kollegal-Kozhikode National Highway
212 and the Mananthavady-Bavali-Mysore State highway, now tipped into a
frenzied propaganda. People feared that their right to a normal life would be
taken away from them; that they would now have to paint their houses green;
that they cannot switch their lights on after eight in the night; that they cannot
use the road once the dusk falls. Their fears were aggravated when, in July
2012, the adjacent Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu was closed following a
Supreme Court directive.
Wayanad plunged into a crisis. Land prices nosedived;
commerce and trade were badly hit—a prominent gold and diamond retail jewellery
chain that had planned to open a branch in Sulthan Bathery shifted its
operations to Kalpetta which lies outside Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary. The
Syro-Malabar Church’s diocese in Wayanad at Mananthavady organized protests
against the ‘tiger scare’. (Wayanad, which once upon a time was a tribal area,
has a substantial population of Christian farmers who had migrated to the
district from central Kerala in the first half of last century and who have now
become a major political force; the encroachment of the forest land by these
farmers is attributed to be one of the key reasons for the shrinking of the
region’s forest area.) CPI (M), whose
image had taken a beating following the sensational TP Chandrashekharan murder,
wasted no time in identifying the issue of tiger reserve in Wayanad as a
springboard to regain its lost political ground. Flex boards sprang up in
Sulthan Bathery with the image of a tiger-man: the body of a tiger to which was
fixed the face of MI Shanavas, the Congress Member of Parliament from the
constituency of Wayanad. ‘Are you an MP of human beings or are you an MP of
tigers’ was the question put forward to this peculiar creature.
***
The credibility of the census report which
triggered this furious delirium has since been questioned by many, including
wildlife experts. Tiger density is estimated to be usually around 8-10 tigers
per 100 sq.km. If the census report is to be believed, the tiger density in
Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary is approximately 22 tigers per 100 sq.km. Rubbishing
the report as “ridiculously unscientific”, a senior official at Periyar Tiger
Reserve who requested anonymity says: “Wayanad is just a part of the home
range—the Melanad Mysore Tiger Landscape (MMTL) spanning Nagarhole (643 sq.km)
and Bandipur (874 sq.km) tiger reserves in Karnataka, Mudumalai (320 sq.km)
tiger reserve in Tamil Nadu and Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (344 sq.km)—of 78
tigers. For the tiger, the whole stretch is one single forest; it doesn’t
understand state borders.” The erroneous report is said to be a consequence of
conducting the census during summer when tigers from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
come to Wayanad—an evergreen forest—for water. According to Dr. Ullas Karanth,
Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society-India, Centre for Wildlife
Studies, Bangalore, such “improbably high tiger densities and numbers reported
from Wayanad is an outcome of incompetent technical analysis of photo capture
data from some ad hoc camera trapping.”
When several cases of predation on domestic
cattle by a tiger were reported from the village of Begur, outside Wayanad
Wildlife Sanctuary, after November 11, 2012, speculations were rife that a
tiger had been released in Wayanad as part of a larger conspiracy to convert
WSS into a tiger reserve. Some even floated outlandish propositions, according
to one of which the tiger was abandoned by a circus company.
***
On November 14th,
NHT-243 was box trapped by the Kerala Forest Department in the village of
Akkapara in the Periya territorial forest range of the North Wayanad Division. There
was a deep wound on his nose and based on the protruding vertebra and pelvic
bones it was concluded that the ‘rogue’ captive was emaciated. At this stage,
the forest department had said that the predator was a female and it was
confirmed by Wildlife Conservation Society-India, Centre for Wildlife Studies.
“Although we had at the time identified it as a female, it was a mistake
because we had at the time the picture of only one flank of the animal”, says
Dr. Ullas Karanth.
Upon getting news about the capture of the tiger,
people prepared to vent their wrath on the animal. Forest Department officials
were mobbed and told not to release the animal anywhere in Wayanad. The
Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of CPI (M), as part
of their protests against the tiger reserve, decided to ‘blockade the tiger’ at
Sulthan Bathery. The Forest department vehicle carrying the tiger veered away
from the highway and took a short cut through the Kurichiyat range, and
released the tiger in the Dottakulasi forest area in Kerala-Karnataka
border. This region was considered to be a suitable habitat as it has a good
prey base and is away from human habitat. But according to some Adivasis, the tiger was released not
too far from Golur, a settlement inside the forest. (There are around 110
settlements inside Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, of which around 20 are in the core
area. These settlements are home to around 2600 families.) The forest officials
were detained on their way back by the irate mob. A couple of media persons and
an environmentalist who had accompanied the forest department officials too
were assaulted. On November 15, 2012, the day after NHT-243 was captured and
released, Wayanad witnessed one of the most ferocious hartals in its history.
Old timers say they cannot recall a similar instance when life in the district
had reached such a standstill.
The forest department was disparaged by
conservationists and environmental activists for its gross mismanagement of the
issue. N Badusha, president of the Wayanad Prakrithi Samrakshana Samithi
(Wayanad Nature Conservation Committee) points out that the tiger was not given
sedation. The department’s failure to treat the tiger’s injury also came under
criticism. According to Dr. Karanth, given the tiger’s advanced age, his
emaciated condition, and the seriousness of the injuries he had suffered, he
should have been held in permanent captivity, or if that was not an option,
euthanized professionally. “Releasing it would pose a risk to itself, to other
tigers that it would try to evict, and potentially to humans and livestock. We
do not recommend the release of old and injured animals, and even younger
dispersal age animals can be released only if there is habitat with sufficient
wild prey and tiger numbers below carrying capacity set by prey. Unfortunately,
there are practically no such areas available. In all other cases, the released
animal will be killed or will evict a resident tiger, thus increasing conflicts
and problems.”
***
Too weak to hunt, or perhaps forced out by
another tiger, NHT-243 returned to human habitat two days later. His efforts in
the early hours of the dawn to capture a cow belonging to Kunjan, a resident of
the Pambankolli settlement in Naykatti at Noolpuzha panchayat—not far from
Golur where the Adivasis say the tiger was released—proved to be futile. The
cow, though severely injured, was not killed. The hungry tiger returned in the
evening and killed a goat and a cow belonging to Kunchu, a resident of the
Plakkavu settlement in the same panchayat. The next day, the people took the
carcasses and blockaded the highway, demanding the tiger to be killed. During
the protests, bamboo groves were set on fire, forest officials were attacked,
and the newly built forest department quarters was stoned. “Neither the forest
department nor the district administration took any necessary steps to ensure protection
for us. The tiger was attacking the cattle; what would have happened if it
started attacking human beings? How could we be sure that the tiger was not a
man-eater?”, asks Asees, an auto driver staying at Naykatti. “Taking the
carcasses and blockading the highway was a desperate step to draw attention to
the gravity of the issue”.
But according to wildlife experts and
conservationists, the crisis would not have exacerbated if the carcasses were
left to the tiger and not taken to the highway. P.M. Suresh, retired Assistant
Conservator of Forests who now runs a bakery in Sulthan Bathery, indicts the
forest department for its failure to put its foot down and prevent the mob from
taking away the tiger’s kill. “You cannot expect the mob to act responsibly. It
is the duty of the administrators to ensure that the right steps are taken when
a crisis is encountered. You cannot feed a tiger; it will eat only what it has
captured. If it could have been ensured that the kill was left to the tiger,
the forest department could have easily tranquilized the tiger before the
situation deteriorated.”
Though the Forest Department officials do not
refute the technical validity of the retired ACF’s argument, they defend
themselves by counter-arguing that the state of affairs had gone out of their
hands. An official at the Sulthan Bathery range who requested anonymity says
that the situation had become one of law and order, and as such the department
had its hands tied. “The mob was controlled by goons and it was up to the
district administration to help us out by keeping the mob under control.” He
also points out that the low guard strength of the department—there are, for
instance, only 8 guards in the Bathery Range when the requirement is 16—is a
significant impediment to the department’s successful operations in critical
circumstances. According to O.P. Kaler, the Chief Conservator of Forests
(Palakkad Division) who oversees the sanctuary, “there was very little the
forest department could have done as the mob had become extremely incensed.
They were anti-forest department and anti-tiger. Their interactions with the
department had become a case of your-tiger-and-our-life situation.”
The mode and nature of the protests—in some ways
it was also like a festival, says Asees— led many wildlife activists to suspect
that the powerful land and resort mafia in the region was exploiting the public
outrage against the ‘problem’ tiger to pre-empt a tiger reserve in the region. It is estimated that around 100 hotels and resorts have been built
in Wayanad in the last five years alone. Denying the allegations, Shobhan
Kumar, president of the action council formed by the villagers, says that people
from all walks of life and with different political views had come together for
a common cause. “You cannot imagine the kind of fear that we were living with. The
cattle were lifted by the tiger from thickly populated human habitats. The
protests were a spontaneous expression of the public’s anger. In the process,
some anti-socials might also have sneaked in. But that happens in every mass
protest.” Taking a dig at the conservationists, he says that it is easy to
romanticize as long as you are not bitten, in this case literally, by reality.
“N. Badusha is a close friend of mine and I respect him a lot for what he has
done. But, really, how far can you go? He says that it is wrong to say that the
tiger ‘attacked’ the cattle, that we don’t say we ‘attacked’ a hen when we want
to eat chicken. I wonder whether he would have said the same if cattle were his
only source of livelihood and if a tiger had killed them.”
***
Meanwhile, frantic to feed his hunger, NHT-243 kept pouncing on
more cattle though he could take away his kill on only two occasions despite
killing around twenty in a span of two weeks. Two cows and two goats were
killed—from three different houses—on the night of November 20th
alone. People of Naykatti panchayat, where the tiger was on the prowl, endured
sleepless, fearful nights; from temples and churches, loudspeakers blared out
warnings against venturing out. Occasionally, they peeped through their
windows, as much with fear as with hope.
In a desperate bid to save its face and to pacify the public, the
forest department claimed that the present tiger was different from the one
that was earlier released in the Dottakulasi forest area in Kerala-Karnataka
border. News reports in the Hindu dated 23-11-2012 quote forest officials
attributing the kills from November 17 to the presence of a different tiger. On
24-11-2012, Malayala Manorama carried a photograph of the alleged ‘second
problem tiger.’ The claim, however, fell flat on ground zero when Wildlife Conservation Society-India, Centre for
Wildlife Studies identified the second tiger as a male named Brahma that is
currently held in Mysore zoo. Brahma was a problem tiger which was trapped in
Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary’s fringes as far back as 5-4-2008.
As the panic peaked and the protests took a far
more violent turn—“We will burn the forests. We will poison the
lakes”—political parties too joined and started leading the chorus that called
for the blood of NHT-243. “People are our primary concern”, said CPI (M)
district Secretary C.K. Saseendran. “A tiger reserve is a cause of worry
because it would involve relocation of tens of thousands of people”. I. C.
Balakrishnan, Congress M.L.A representing the constituency of Sulthan Bathery
lashed out against his own government. Addressing the huge gathering of
protestors, M.I. Shanavas, Wayanad MP, proclaimed that the tiger will be
killed. “There is no question of a tiger reserve in Wayanad. The propaganda is
baseless. I am for the rights of the people than for the rights of animals.
People’s lives have to be protected at any cost”
On November 30, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy came
down to Wayanad, and after a meeting with officials of various departments,
representatives of local bodies, and parties, said that the government has no
plan to set up a tiger reserve in Wayanad. He visited the three villages where
NHT-243 had been roaming, and assured the action committee that the search
operations for the tiger would continue till the animal was caught. After
declaring that the government had decided to withdraw all cases registered
against those in connection with the protests, the Chief Minister sensationally
announced that he would personally take responsibility to protect the official
who kills the tiger. “The policy of the government is to protect the wildlife,
but it would not be at the cost of human lives.”
***
In the meantime, the hunt for NHT-243 was being
carried out on a wartime basis. A team of hundred, led by O.P. Kaler, furiously
combed the jungles for the slinky tiger. A special task force from Mudumalai
tiger reserve and an army of kumki elephants too joined the operation. On
November 21, V Gopinath, Chief Wild Life Warden, ordered capturing of the tiger
“by any means”. “Tranquilizers, traps and all other means to capture it alive
will be tried before the last option—shooting—is attempted,” he said. (According
to the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, the Chief Wild Life Warden is the only
person designated to order the killing of a wild animal.) Throughout
its operations, the team was accompanied by a large mob. “It was a complete
failure of law and order”, says N Badusha. “What would have happened if the
tiger turned aggressive to the mob?” On November 22, the tiger was thrice
spotted in Narikkolli, but since he was moving, he could not be tranquilized.
The task was made even tougher by the lush undergrowth in the forest.
By the end of November, NHT-243 had moved from Naykatti to the
adjacent panchayat Moolankave. On the morning of December 2, he was found in a
private coffee estate at Thelampatta, and was subsequently cornered. At around
7.30, the veterinary surgeons of the team fired a ketamine (tranquilizer) shot
at the tiger. As television channels flashed the news, people started flocking
to the estate. The tiger had by now slinked into the estate. Chaos reigned as
the search continued. The police could do nothing to prevent the mob from
entering the estate. Around an hour later, the tiger was spotted again. When
the second ketamine shot was administered, he threatened to pounce, upon which
one of the team members, C.R.Joseph shot him dead. “I had no other option”, he
says. “If I had not killed it, it would have killed me. Or else the mob would
have killed the tiger anyway.” According to a senior official of the team, the
killing could certainly have been avoided if the police had managed the mob
better or if 144 was declared. “Ketamine shots take a while to have an effect.
But the animal can be managed during this time. If not for the mob, we could
have certainly tranquilized it.”
For a tiger that had
terrorized a region for almost a month, his end was bereft of any theatre.
There was no spectacular last-ditch fightback. All it took was one bullet, and
the death was instant. According to eye witnesses, he merely wagged his tail
thrice. NHT-243 had his last meal on November 23, 2012, nine days before his
death.
Post Script:
The investigation done by the National
Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) on the killing of NHT-243 has implicated
the officials. NTCA has recommended to the state government to take punitive
action against the officials for ordering the hunting down of an animal
enlisted in the Schedule 1 of the National Wildlife Act of 1972. The Congress
and the CPI (M) have since the incident reiterated that a tiger reserve would
not be welcome in Wayanad. Mar Joseph Porunnedam, bishop of Mananthavady
diocese of Syro Malabar Church issued a pastoral letter on December 4 which
said that “the people of the Wayanad district, which constitute the majority of
the areas under the diocese, are living in fear of the tiger. The noble cause
of environment protection is getting diverted and has drifted away from the
ultimate aim of protecting human beings, due to the vested interests of certain
sections. This will lead to violence and chaos.” On December 13, a petition was
filed in the Kerala High Court seeking a CBI probe into the killing. On
December 14, the Kerala High Court sought an explanation from the Union
Ministry of Environment and Forests on the petition.
***
