A 50-year-old tribal woman was killed by a tiger in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) on Monday afternoon.
The deceased M. Gowri, an adivasi resident of Kurumbarpadi in the buffer zone of the tiger reserve, had ventured into a forest patch along with her husband Maathan and three others. Forest department officials said that the five persons had driven their cattle into the reserve forest in Kallallah in the Sigara Forest Range to graze.
They had herded the animals more than two km. into the reserve forest when a tiger, which had been unnoticed in the area, attacked Gowri, dragging her away from the rest of the group. The animal dragged Gowri around 100 meters away from the site of the initial attack, before fleeing after Maathan and the others calling for help.
Deputy Director of MTR (buffer zone), L.C.S. Srikanth, said that interim compensation would be provided to the family and that the forest department was investigating how the attack happened. Officials said that the incident did not occur close to a human habitation but inside a reserve forest. They said that the location the incident occurred pointed to the attack being purely incidental and not because the animal was actively stalking humans as prey.
Srinivas R. Reddy, Field Director (in-charge) of MTR, said that camera traps are to be installed near to where the incident occurred. “We suspect that the attack was purely incidental, and that the tiger could have been an adult female with cubs, which attacked when the people got too close,” said Mr. Reddy, adding that residents would be warned to not venture into the forest to graze their cattle.
The body of the victim was retrieved and sent for postmortem. This is the first human fatality resulting from a tiger attack in the Nilgiris since 2016, officials said.