A tiger had strayed into a village in the Sunderbans on Christmas Eve, prompting the state forest department to launch a massive search operation.
On Tuesday, a team of foresters who were tracking the tiger managed to drive it back into the Dhunchi forest in the Patharpratima block of the Sunderbans.
Foresters have set up an 18km-long nylon fence along the forest to prevent tigers from crossing rivers and entering villages.
A senior forest department official said the tiger that has been driven into the Dhunchi forest had crossed the Rose Creek and its pugmarks were first spotted by residents of Upendra Nagar village in L-Plot. The villagers alerted the forest department.
The tiger stayed amid undergrowth and thickets of Upendra Nagar and its roars were heard by villagers as well as the forest department team. The foresters placed a fence made of nylon net around the village and the places where pugmarks had been spotted to prevent the big cat from entering the village.
On Tuesday morning, the foresters received an alert from residents of the neighbouring Shridhar Nagar village that a fresh set of pugmarks had been spotted on the mud banks along the mangroves.
Around 60 foresters, split into two teams, went to the mangroves near Shridhar Nagar to search for the tiger.
“One of the teams managed to track the tiger down around 2.30pm. The team members drove it back to the Dhunchi forest. We erected an 18km-long nylon net in this forested area as tigers are often spotted here. The net prevents them from crossing over to the human settlements,” said Milan Mondal, divisional forest officer of the South 24-Parganas division.
Mondal said the foresters had also placed a couple of cages with bait in the hope of catching the tiger, but the animal did not fall into the trap.
Mondal, along with other officials of the forest department, was leading the operation.
He said they saw during the operation that several parts of the nylon fence had been chopped off and there were gaping holes in it.
“This is done primarily by fishermen who venture into the creeks to lay crab traps
and fishing nets. These holes in the fence defeat our efforts to prevent tigers from entering human habitations. We will repair the net soon,” Mondal said.
Forest officials, he said, will also conduct awareness camps in the area and ask fishermen and others not to cut open the nylon fence.
