A 43-year-old fisherman is fighting for his life after a tiger attacked him while he was fishing in the Sundarbans, the latest in a string of deadly encounters that has gripped the Kultali region over the past month.
Mannan Laskar, a resident of Deulbari in Kultali, is undergoing treatment in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a Kolkata hospital.
His attack comes amid a sharp rise in human-wildlife conflict in the Sundarbans, where six separate tiger attacks in the last month alone have left five men dead.
According to local reports, Laskar had ventured into the Sundarbans waterways on Monday, June 29, along with two fellow fishermen, Sujit Naskar and Tapan Naskar.
At around 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, while the trio was fishing from their boat near the Buridabri forest boundary, a tiger suddenly emerged from the dense Benifeli forest and pounced on Laskar. In a desperate effort, his companions managed to fight off the animal and pull him back onto the boat.
Laskar was rushed to Joynagar Jamtala Hospital for emergency treatment. However, as his condition deteriorated, he was transferred to SSKM Hospital, Kolkata.
According to the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), 12 people have been attacked by tigers in the region so far in 2026, with nine of those attacks proving fatal.
Laskar is the sole breadwinner for his family, and his hospitalization has left his wife, Manchura (35), and their three sons, aged 20, 19, and 11, facing an uncertain financial future.
The civil rights body has accused the local administration of discrimination in the distribution of compensation to victims' families. It has urged the state government to immediately cover Mannan Laskar's medical expenses and provide his family with a livelihood allowance.
APDR alleged that while the block development office's disaster management department handed over ₹4 lakh to the family of Bandana Das, who was attacked in Maipith on June 17, several other affected families have received nothing.
The family of fisherman Goshto Jana, who was attacked on June 3, along with the families of five other recent victims who died in tiger attacks, have reportedly received no financial assistance.
The organisation argued that the administration's inaction violates a November 2025 Supreme Court directive, which mandates compensation of ₹10 lakh for the families of those killed in tiger attacks and ₹4 lakh for those injured.
APDR state general secretary Altaf Ahmed said, "Why this blatant duplicity? We are seeing absolute silence from the state government and the forest minister."
The body has also demanded immediate government jobs for the families of all those killed, along with the full ₹10 lakh compensation mandated by the court. The organisation has called on the chief minister to personally intervene and break what it described as the forest ministry's silence.