A tiger strayed into a Sunderbans village and attacked forest personnel trying to rescue a villager who had climbed a tree to escape the claws on Monday.

Ganesh Shyamal, 36, a member of a quick response team, comprising villagers trained by the forest department, is undergoing treatment at SSKM Hospital for serious injuries that he suffered trying to stave off the tiger.

The tiger had strayed into Nagenabad village in Maipith, South 24-Parganas, around 100km from the heart of Calcutta.

Forest department officials and villagers said pugmarks were first spotted on Sunday night near the embankment of the Makri river, which separates the village and the Ajmali 11 forest compartment.

Till late on Monday evening, the tiger eluded foresters and was somewhere on a farmland near the village.

On Monday morning, the villagers alerted the forest department after seeing pugmarks, and officials deployed a 32-member quick response team.

Pugmarks near the Makri river on Monday morning

Ganesh Shyamal and his two brothers, residents of the nearby Madhya Gurguria village in Maipith, were part of the quick response team.

“We left home around 7am and reached Nagenabad after half an hour,” Mangal Shyamal, the elder brother of Ganesh, told Metro at SSKM Hospital. “We saw pugmarks near the banks of the Makri river and were following the footprints,” he said.

After some time, Mangal entered a house to have snacks when he and others spotted the tiger moving past some banana plants. Armed with sticks, the team members and forest officials tried to drive the tiger towards the river.

“But it entered a berry orchard. We were shouting
and alerting villagers. The owner of the orchard, an old man, was there. He got scared and climbed a tree. The tiger then sat under the tree and the man could not get down,” Mangal recounted.

Ganesh and others were shouting and went closer to drive the tiger away so the man could get down, said Mangal.

“However, the tiger suddenly ran towards my brother and jumped at him. To avoid the tiger grabbing his neck, my brother put his left hand inside its mouth,” said Mangal.

Still, the tiger managed to hit his right eye with the claws. Other members of the quick response team beat the tiger and it ran away.

Ganesh was taken to SSKM Hospital’s trauma care unit. “He suffered trauma on the face, right eye and left ear. Also, there is a lacerated injury on his left hand,” said a hospital official.

Mangal said he and his two brothers were trained by the forest department in driving away tigers from localities.

“We have been part of the quick response team for four years,” he said. They took part in around 25 such operations but this was the first time one of them came under attack from a tiger.

Usually, straying tigers seek shelter in a contiguous patch of mangroves along
the riverbank. But in this case, the tiger came out of the
patch and moved around 500m towards the village.

“It was hiding in a farmland, with a perimeter of around 400m, when the confrontation happened. It charged at the members of the quick response team,” said an official of the South 24-Parganas forest division.

After the fight, the tiger retreated to the farmland, where it was hiding till late on Monday evening. The foresters have barricaded the land with nylon nets and two trap cages have been set up.

A tranquillising team is on standby.

“Tranquillisation is our last option as it causes a lot of trauma for the tiger. We want to trap it in the cage. The tiger’s retreat towards the river and eventually the Ajmalmari forest compartment is not ruled out. But it is unlikely, given the unconventional shelter it has found,” said Debal Ray, the chief wildlife warden of Bengal.

A large team of forest personnel, led by Nisha Goswami, the divisional forest officer of South 24-Parganas, is at the spot. The area is under Maipith Coastal police station. Policemen are using loudhailers to urge people not to venture anywhere near the farmland.

This newspaper has reported on a surge in the tiger-straying incidents in the South 24-Parganas forest division. Most of the tigers are suspected to have strayed from the Ajmalmari 1 and 11 and Herobhanga 9 forest compartments.

The Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), a human rights organisation, has said Maipith alone has witnessed at least 25 incidents of tiger-straying this winter.

“We think this is a failure of the forest department. Many victims of tiger attacks are yet to get any compensation from the forest department,” said Mithun Mondal, an assistant secretary of the South 24-Parganas unit of the APDR.

“Wear and tear of nylon nets bordering the Sunderbans forests and a surge in thetiger population are responsible for the surge in the straying incidents,” said a forest official.

“Most straying incidents happen in winter, which is the mating season of tigers. Dominant males are known to travel long distances and drive out territorial males. The big cats who are driven out often reach the threshold of villages,” he said.