Lalgarh/Calcutta: A tiger was clicked in a jungle near Lalgarh on Friday, forest officials said amid claims it was the animal's first sighting in the region in recent memory.

Hidden cameras inside the Melkhedia forest - a 50sqkm patch in Jhargram district - first captured the full-grown male at 4.28am on Friday, said Rabindranath Saha, the divisional forest officer of Midnapore range. "The tiger was captured again at the same spot at 6.15am," Saha said, describing the sightings in the area as a "rarity".

The sightings in Lalgarh, around 170km from Calcutta, come over a month after a driver travelling through Kalimpong's Neora Valley National Park in north Bengal spotted a tiger and photographed it. The January 19 sighting in Neora was accidental and described as "rare".

Villagers in Lalgarh had recently alleged attacks on livestock. At least a dozen cows, calves and goats went missing or their corpses found near the forests over the past few months. "We initially suspected a hyena or a leopard," said another forest official.

On January 30, some villagers saw pugmarks and alerted the local administration. Wildlife experts examined the marks and the pictures were sent to Calcutta. Nearly a month later, on February 27, the marks were confirmed as those of a tiger, divisional forest officer Saha said.

Five pairs of cameras - with sensors activated by any movement within 50ft - were put up on tree trunks and other strategic locations inside the core forest area. A few more cameras were installed on Thursday.

After the confirmation of a tiger's presence, forest officials have got busy with two things - first to ascertain how it reached Lalgarh and what to do with the big cat.

"The tiger has, in all likelihood, strayed from Odisha or Jharkhand for some reason. May be because of an injury or a fight with another tiger or some other reason. Those questions can be answered after the tiger is captured," said Ravi Kant Sinha, the chief wildlife warden of Bengal.

The nearest tiger habitat from Lalgarh is Odisha's Simlipal National Park, more than 200km away. Forest officials in Bengal will coordinate with their counterparts in Odisha to check if any tiger at Simlipal is missing, said the official.

The Palamu tiger reserve in Jharkhand is 400km from Jhargram. Elephants from the Jharkhand's Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary often stray into Jhargram through the forest patches of Belpahari. "But there has not been any instance of tiger straying into this side of the border in recent memory," said a source.

As the nation-wide tiger census is on, finding its origin would not be difficult, said a forest department official.

Officials have already laid traps inside the forest to capture the tiger. "The forests of Jhargram are not big enough to accommodate tigers. The dense human settlements surrounding the forest are also a problem," said an official.

Once captured, the tiger will be released into another forest, said Sinha. "We are scared. But not being able to enter the forest will mean no income. The forest officials should capture the tiger as soon as possible," said Shyamal Mahato, who lives in Madhupur village, near the forest where the tiger has been sighted.