Tiger tiger everywhere

When Laxman Baitha’s brother-in-law called him to say his wife was unwell, he lost no time in boarding a train home.

A migrant worker, the 50-year-old frequently travelled from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh to work in a stone cutting factory. When the news of his wife’s illness came, he bought an unreserved train ticket and left. It took him two days to reach his home in Jimri village in West Champaran district – a journey of over 2,000 kilometres.

When he finally got home, he was relieved to see that his wife's health had improved. But she was weeping even as she hugged him. “I could not understand anything. I asked my wife why she was crying,” says Laxman, recalling the incident.

“A tiger has killed our son Rajkumar,” Chandavati Devi told him, her voice trembling. The 47-year-old had collapsed on hearing the news, and so her husband had to come.

Rajkumar, the third child of his parents, had taken the family’s five goats for grazing. The 13-year-old was often in-charge of the goats and would take them near the Valmiki Tiger Reserve – barely a kilometre from his home.

But on May 14, 2022, while grazing his animals, he was attacked by a tiger (Panthera tigris). A passerby saw the attack and ran toward the village. Rajkumar’s motionless body was taken to the sub-divisional hospital 25 kilometres away in Bagaha, where he was declared dead.

“The tiger had eaten his right hand, back and abdomen,” Chandavati Devi recalls.

The family of a person killed by wild animals is entitled to a compensation of Rs.10 lakh, says the Ministry of Forests, Environment and Climate Change. This is for death and damages to humans living around reserves, not in the core areas where tigers and other wildlife live; human activity is strictly prohibited here. The core of VTR is spread over 598.45 square kilometres; 300.93 sq km is buffer area.

“There is no physical marking of the core area boundary. So, locals don't know where the core area starts,” says Junaid, a tiger tracker in the VT for nearly three decades. “People enter the core area by mistake,” he adds.

The 13-year-old’s body, say his family, was dragged by the tiger into the core area. And that changed everything. “Forest department officials told me that the body was recovered from the core area,” Laxman told this reporter. “Photo and videos of my son [in the core] were posted all over social media, so I can't get compensation.”

Laxman refutes the officials’ claim: “how can a 13-year-old boy go inside the deep forest. The tiger came out [of the core], killed my son and dragged him into the forest.” The devastated father adds, “he was very good at studies and wanted to be a government employee.”

Located in the Shivalik ranges of the Himalayas, VTR became part of Project Tiger in 1994 and the number of big cats has grown exponentially – from 10 in 2006 to 54 in 2022. “Being a high-density tiger population, it is prone to conflict with humans in the area,” says an National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) report, Status of Tigers – Predators and Prey in India.

Locals living in the 8-9 vulnerable villages around often enter the forest buffer zone for firewood and grazing their animals.

In 2022, nine people died after being attacked by a tiger. The VTR is just another tiger reserve where humans and animals are struggling to exist.