A four-month-old male cub was found dead in Manguraha range of Valmiki Tiger Reserve, around 290km northwest of Patna, on Thursday.

Forest employees came across the male cub’s decomposed body while patrolling on Thursday.

Preliminary investigations indicated that the male cub was killed by an adult tiger.

This was the third occasion when any tiger was found dead in the past 73 days from different parts of the forest ranges in the state’s only tiger reserve in West Champaran district.

On March 10, the carcass of an adult Royal Bengal Tiger aged around 17-18 years was recovered from compartment number 7 of Valmikinagar Forest Reserve’s Madanpur forest range.

On April 16, the carcass of a tigress aged around 13 to 14 years was recovered from Hathinala near the Sashastra Seema Bal border outpost in the reserve’s Done area.

“The cub whose body was recovered was one among the three brought by a tigress to Manguraha range around four months back,” said Santosh Tiwari, the dir- ector-cum-conservator of forests, Valmiki Tiger Reserve.

He apprehended that taking advantage of the cub left alone by its mother out on a hunt, another adult tiger preyed upon it.

Following a post-mortem by a team of veterinarians, the male cub’s body was cremated in Valmiki Tiger Reserve on Friday, Tiwari added.