Tussle between villagers, admin over corpse
Guwahati: A sub-adult tigress was killed by villagers of Medziphema in Dimapur district of Nagaland after the endangered animal had been chased and cornered by a group of villagers at the edge of the village.
The Chief Wildlife Warden of Nagaland, S P Tripathi confirmed that the tigress was shot dead by villagers and a case would be registered before the chief judicial magistrate as per the provision of Wildlife (Protection) Act once the post-mortem report was received.
Later, forest and district administration officials faced tough time to take custody of the carcass of the animals from the tribal villagers who were initially unwilling to part with the carcass as they wanted it to preserve as a trophy of bravery.
Forest and district administration officials found it very hard to reason the villagers on the legal implications of hunting endangered wildlife.
The village elders maintained the animal was killed solely with the intention of protecting human lives and livestock.The tigress had been reportedly troubling the village for over a week raiding livestock belonging to the villagers.
As the tigress’ raids grew more troublesome endangering livestock as well as human beings, the village on Monday made a collective decision to scare and chase the animal away from the village periphery.A team of villagers launched the search for the animal in the morning hours and could track down the tigress just outside the edge of the village and was making attempts to chase her deep into the forest beyond the village when one young man was mauled by the cornered animal.
The enraged villagers eventually cornered and killed the tigress at round 1:30 pm. The forest officials claimed that they got to know about the development only after the hunting party was mobilized by the villagers.