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Nagpur: A female tiger, age about 3-4 years, was found dead on Sunday 22 November 2020 in Compartment no 1452/1 of the TAS beat of Umred Paoni Karhadala sanctuary in Bhandara district of Maharashtra by local Forest Guard during regular patrolling.The spot is inside the forest and the nearest village is about 3 km away.

According to Field Director Pench Tiger Reserve, DFO Bor Rahul Gawai who was in the tour there reached the spot immediately. During the spot verification as per the SOP of NTCA, 4 foetus, 7-8 weeks old, were also found aborted nearby. The body was found dragged for about 50 m inside thick forest. Several signs and indications of infighting were found in the nearby stream- including blood trails, multiple tracks of pugmarks, drag marks, heavily disturbed ground and body hair spread everywhere, including on the vegetation. Postmortem was carried out in presence of veterinarians Dr Chetan Patond, Dr Syed Bilal and Dr L A Khan LDO Nand, in presence of CCF & FD Pench Tiger reserve, DFO Bor and Sanjay Karkare, Asst. Director, BNHS as the representative of NTCA and Dr Vasanta Kahalkar, Asst. Professor as the reprentative of CWLW.

The carcass was found eaten up from left side with rib cage broken. There were puncture marks on the ventral neck (due to canines) and death might have caused due to asphyxia and bleeding.

As per the observations during PM and circumstantial evidences, prima facie, the internecine fight can be attributed as a cause of death.

Samples have been collected, camera traps have been deployed to collect additional information. All possible information is being collected collected to rule out any other possibilities as a cause of death.

The carcass was disposed-off as per the NTCA SOP.

The tigress was an adult female captured during the last P-IV exercise. She was the new entrant to UPK.