The Royal Bengal tiger at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation near Kaziranga National Park on Tuesday. Telegraph picture

Guwahati, March 30: The Royal Bengal tiger which was captured at Atkhel tea estate under Geleki police station in Sivasagar district yesterday after killing two persons may be released at Nameri tiger reserve in Sonitpur district.

The five-year-old tiger had killed a 12-year-old girl as soon as she entered the forest adjacent to the tea estate to collect firewood. It then attacked five others, one of them fatally and another critically.

A forest department official said the chief conservator of forest (wildlife), Suresh Chand, would decide on where the tiger would be released after a meeting with officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

“The meeting is likely to be held very soon. However, it will take some time for the tiger to be shifted to the new location. First it should overcome the ordeal it had gone through yesterday,” he added.

The tiger is undergoing treatment at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation at Panbari near Kaziranga National Park.

“The animal is in a bit of shock. It will take some time for it to cool down,” a veterinarian at the centre said. He added that the tiger was doing fine and no injury marks had been noticed.

Sources said officials had ruled out releasing the tiger at Kaziranga as it already has a large tiger population. According to an unofficial count, 23 tigers were found in a 100-square-km area of the park recently. In the official count at the beginning of the millennium, 86 tigers were found in the 430-square-km national park.

The vet said the tiger was likely to be released at Nameri National Park, bordering Arunachal Pradesh. In the last count in 2002, 26 Royal Bengal tigers were found in the 200-square-km park, which is also a tiger reserve.

However, forest officials are totally confused as to how a full-grown Royal Bengal tiger surfaced in the Geleki area, bordering Nagaland.

“There are no previous records of a Royal Bengal tiger being spotted in that particular location. It’s strange that a huge tiger appeared there,” one of them said.