The pugmarks spotted in the Simlapal forest of Bankura and the Malaboti forest in Jhargram’s Silda are of an adult female tiger and her cub, a forest department official said on Tuesday.

Two cages have been set up, one in each forest, to trap the animals and at least 10 camera traps installed to photograph them. Four more camera traps have been requisitioned and will be set up on Wednesday.

“The camera traps have been fixed in forests bordering several villages, including Kuldiha, Bhulabeda and Siyarbinda, under Belapahari police station,” an officer said.

The area where the tigers are roaming around is quite close to where a tribal hunting party killed a Bengal tiger in Lalgarh on March 2018, the forest official said.

Wildlife activists are worried about the safety of the tigress and its cub. The inexperience of local foresters is a challenge, a senior forest official said.

The forests of the western districts of Bengal are mostly inhabited by elephants and the villagers and forest guards are trained in handling pachyderms, not big cats.

A team of officers from the Sunderbans, equipped with tranquillising guns, is camping in the area.

A villager at Patharchabi, near Binpur in Jhargram, claimed to have spotted a tiger cub at his home on Tuesday morning. “It was extremely foggy and I saw what looked like a tiger cub near my chicken shed. I was scared and threw a stone at it after which it slinked away,” Rabindranath Pramanik told Metro.

Officials said it was likely that the tiger had gone there to make a kill and was lured in by the chicken coop.

A female tiger with a cub is extremely protective and can be quite aggressive as well, the official said.

Forest officials came across the carcass of a goat on Monday.

Another officer said a bus driver had spotted a tiger at a turning on the road that leads to Kuldiha from Belpahari. “The driver told us that he saw the tiger around 5.45pm and that it leapt into the bushes the moment it saw the approaching bus,” said the officer.

A senior forest official said the tigers could have come from the forests of Jharkhand. “The natural instinct would be to go back to the Jharkhand forests and we are trying to ensure their safe passage.”