Post-mortem reveals man-eater to be 5 year-old tiger

Udhgamandalam: An autopsy on the man-eater carnivore, which was shot dead, has revealed it to could be a five-year-old male tiger, a top forest official said today.

There was some contradiction about the gender of the animal, which killed three persons during the last fortnight, with some officials claiming it to be a tigress immediately after its death, while others said it was a tiger. However, talking to reporters here, after the post-mortem of the carnivore, V T Kandasamy, Conservator of Forests, Coimbatore Circle, said it was in fact a tiger which had migrated from Mudumalai after a territorial fight with other tigers. He said the lower jaw of the tiger was found broken and that was the reason it had engaged soft targets like human-beings and cows for food. Images captured by the camera immediately after it killed a woman and the tiger was similar, confirming this to be the man-eater on the prowl, he said. Refusing to reveal the number of bullets that caused the death, he said the body parts and post-mortem reports have been sent to the office of National Tiger Authority. While Special Task Force, who shot dead the tiger last night, claimed that 32 rounds were fired and 10 to 12 bullets might have hit it, some forest officials said only four bullets could have killed the animal. The carcass was later burnt near a deer park near here. Meanwhile, some villagers today complained that they noticed the movement of a wild animal at Parlahatti village, some five kms from Kappachi where the tiger was shot dead. It could either be a leopard or tiger, they said.