The tiger escaped from this enclosure. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, June 1: A Royal Bengal Tiger, which after straying from the wild was held captive in the Nandankanan zoo for over a month, escaped from its enclosure last night by scaling an 18-feet fence. However, officials said there was no danger to visitors as the tiger was “well outside the zoo area”.

The six-year-old male animal was first spotted roaming around the zoo in March. The animal entered the 30-acre tiger safari park after zoo officials opened its emergency gates on April 29 and confined the tiger on the safari premises. Since then, zoo authorities and wildlife activists had been debating whether the tiger would be housed in Nandankanan or released into its natural habitat.

At 9.05pm yesterday, the tiger was shifted to a smaller enclosure (32-C) of 3,840 square feet on the recommendations of an expert panel, which felt that its movement could not be monitored properly in the huge safari area. However, before a final call on its fate could be taken, the tiger jumped over the iron fence and, in the process, snapped the wires of a CCTV camera installed in the enclosure.

“One of the two CCTV cameras stopped providing live video feed around 10. 30pm. We thought it must have happened due to a technical snag. However, after two hours, we failed to trace the tiger through the second camera. We tried to locate it by using searchlights around 3am from a vantage point, but it was nowhere to be seen,” said a senior zoo officer.

This morning, zoo authorities collected pugmarks up to one-kilometre from the enclosure. Of these, two most prominent pugmarks were found near two water bodies. Broken nails were also found inside the enclosure.

Officials suspect that it might have disappeared into the forest area on the southern side of Nandankanan sanctuary.

The zoo occupies around 70 per cent of the sanctuary area. They said the tiger might have even escaped to the nearby Chandaka-Dampara sanctuary, which is adjacent to the complex. However, zoo authorities ruled out any possibility of threat to visitors. “The animal is well outside the zoo area. The visitors need not panic,” said zoo director Sudarshan Panda.

Principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) and chief wildlife warden J.D Sharma said that the government has ordered a probe into the incident. “The zoo director will conduct a probe to figure out the circumstances under which the tiger escaped. Action will be taken against officials if they are found guilty of negligence of duty,” said Sharma.

The zoo authorities have now decided to install additional CCTV cameras around the tiger safari area as well as infrared-based trap cameras around the water bodies to keep a tab on the movement of the tiger. Besides pug impression pads would be put in place to trace the animal.

The tiger had been confined in the zoo for over a month after a technical committee, which included government officials, wildlife experts and experts from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, constituted as per guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), failed to ascertain the original habitat of the tiger.

The standard operating procedure of the NTCA, which is aimed at dealing with situations of tigers straying in human dominated landscapes, explains that a tiger may be released into the wild after radio collaring in a suitable habitat with adequate prey base, away from human settlements under intimation to the NCTA following recommendations of a technical committee.