The adult tiger, which had ventured into the Junglemahal area of Bengal before returning to Jharkhand, hails from the Palamu Tiger Reserve.

The identity was discovered after a trap camera installed in the core forest area of the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary captured a picture of the tiger on Wednesday night.

The picture was then sent to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun, which has confirmed the tiger to be that from the Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Jharkhand.

PTR director Kumar Ashutosh also confirmed that the photo of the tiger matched with the one spotted in the Palamu reserve.

“It is an adult tiger, aged around 3-4 years, and has been in the PTR since November 2023. The tiger’s last photograph captured in the PTR was on December 4 last year. It has been treading across forest corridors of Gumla, Khunti and other districts of Jharkhand and even Chhattisgarh and Bengal,” said Ashutosh.

The PTR official said that based on the findings of the trap cameras and pug marks, the reserve had five male tigers and one tigress.

Jamshedpur divisional forest officer, Saba Alam Ansari, who also holds charges of Dalma forest division, said: “Based on the WII’s findings it has been confirmed that it was from PTR and after being found in Chandil (in Seraikela-Kharsawan) and also ventured into Purulia,Jhargram and Bankuradistricts of Bengal before returning to Ghatshila and is currently in Dalma forest.”

The forest official said that the same tiger was spotted in Chatra and Hazaribagh last year before it returned to Palamu and then ventured into Chhattisgarh.

“Based on the data collected from different states, this tiger has not attacked humans. Usually, tigers are shy and avoid human habitation. However, we have alerted the villagers not to venture into the forest after dusk and early in the morning. So far, the tiger has not attacked any cattle in Dalma,” said Ansari.

The tiger’s picture was taken near the Bandarjal area of Dalma Sanctuary, close to Patamda-Bodam.

The tiger was spotted in Chandil (in Seraikela-Kharsawan district) in the last week of December before it sneaked into Bengal in January, where the authorities managed to capture its photograph via a trap camera.

The big cat again returned to Jharkhand and was spotted in the Ghatshila forest range on January 21.

A team of forest officials from Chandil, Mango, Ghatshila and Dalma are constantly monitoring the movement of the tiger.

“Tigers have the habit of returning to their native forest areas after a while. We assume that it would take a route back to Palamu, sooner or later. Till then, we will be monitoring its movement for the security and safety of the tiger and the human population,” a forest official said.

It is being said that the tiger is travelling up to 40-50km a day.