A splash in the river. Two fishermen lean from the banks to see what fell in. They see the fast disappearing legs of their friend, a tiger dragging him by the neck across the water.

A Sundarbans tiger leapt from a riverside forest and, in one lightning motion, snatched Sambhu Sardar from between his friends and plunged into the water on Monday morning.

“The tiger pounced so silently and so fast that we didn’t realise anything,” said Amrita Sardar who was, with neighbours Sambhu and Bijay Sardar, trying to catch crabs along a riverbank in Chamta, a forest block in the Sundarban Tiger Reserve.

“We heard a splash. When Bijay and I bent down to look, we saw Sambhu’s legs. The tiger had him by the neck.”

For a few seconds, neither could move. “Then we grabbed our oars and rushed towards the water. We banged our boat with the oars and then rushed towards the animal, wading through the shallow water and screaming at it. It let go of Sambhu and fled,” Amrita said.

It was the middle of nowhere; and no help was coming.

“We dragged Sambhu out of the water. He was gasping and soon stopped breathing,” Amrita said. They carried his body into the boat.

Sambhu, 32, a fisherman from Kantamari village in Kultali block of South 24-Parganas, had set out in a boat with Amrita and Bijay to catch crabs.

“We left our village on Sunday. It takes several hours to reach the deep forest,” Amrita said.

“Around 8.30 on Monday morning, during high tide, the three of us started setting traps for crabs along the riverbank.”

They made knots with ropes, placed food in them, and tied them to bricks.

“We set several traps along a stretch of about 800 metres and were returning, lifting the traps from the water with crabs stuck to some of them,” Amrita said.

“Sambhu was barely two metres from me to the right. The forest started almost from the edge of the riverbank.”

That was when the tiger struck.

As he and Bijay rowed along with Sambhu’s body on their boat, Amrita called a local businessman.

“He sent a boat fitted with motors. It was faster; it met us midway,” he said.

They reached their village late on Monday evening, having travelled for more than 10 hours.

Doctors pronounced Sambhu dead at a local hospital.

“I have been going to the forests for seven years now. I have seen tigers swimming across rivers — but never so close, attacking,” Amrita said.

Villagers gathered In front of Sambhu Sardar’s house at Kantamari village in Kultali on Monday night

Local fishermen say they usually spend a week in the forests on their boats to catch crabs. They earn between ₹3,000 and ₹5,000 each a trip.

Villagers demanded compensation for Sambhu’s family from the state forest department.

“An estimated 13 fishermen have died from tiger attacks and one from a crocodile attack this year, but none received compensation from the forest department,” said Mithun Mondal, vice-president of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights in South 24-Parganas.

“Tiger attacks increase in winter, the season for crabs,” he explained.

“There’s a Calcutta High Court order to award compensation to all tiger victims, whether they happen in the core area (of the tiger reserve) or not.”

Estimates by local people and the NGOs working to mitigate human-animal conflict suggest that tigers kill more than 20 people across the 4,000sqkm stretch of the Indian Sundarbans almost every year.

On Monday, the trio had been inside the core area of the tiger reserve, a forest official said.

“It’s a prohibited area; they had entered illegally,” hesaid.

“They got off the boat and stepped into the forest. Sardar was installing a trap for crabs when he was attacked.”

Asked why such incursions were allowed to happen, the official said the forest department faced an acute staff crunch. “It’s impossible to prevent encroachments across such a vast area with our limited resources.”

Justin Jones, deputy field director of the tiger reserve, ruled out compensation.

“The court order was not a blanket direction; it was about a particular case,” he said. “A compensation in this case will encourage more people to enter the prohibited areas. That will endanger both animals and humans.”

The challenging terrain of the Sundarbans, the world’s only mangrove tiger habitat, offers few employment opportunities to local people.

With the water levels rising constantly, survival itself is a challenge. Thousands migrate to Calcutta or cities outside Bengal to find work.

For the many who stay back, the forest is a key — and perilous — source of livelihood. Families have been venturing into the forests for generations to catch fish and crab.

Activists said the situation was unlikely to change until the government provided for alternative means of livelihood for the forest-dependent populations.

Many who enter the prohibited areas do so by breaching the nets that border the forests. Tigers have been known to use these holes to come out of the forests and stray into villages.

The boats, though, can enter the core areas without breaching any nets.