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Agence France-Presse

A man-eating tiger that claimed more than a dozen victims in two years has been shot dead in India, sparking controversy about whether the killing was legal.
One of India’s most high-profile tiger hunts in decades ended on Friday night when the mother of two 10-month-old cubs – known to hunters as T1 but “Avni” to wildlife lovers – was shot dead in the jungles of Maharashtra state.
A team of more than 150 people spent months searching for T1, using a paraglider and dozens of infrared cameras while sharpshooters had ridden on the backs of elephants.

However disputes quickly erupted after the killing as media reports said the tiger was shot in Yavatmal forest with no attempt to tranquillise her.
India’s Supreme Court had issued a hunting order for T1 – blamed for 13 deaths since June 2016 – in September, ruling she could be killed if tranquilisers failed. Several appeals were made against the death sentence.
Avni was killed illegally satisfying a hunter’s lust for blood
PETA
The tiger was killed at night, when tranquilisers are not allowed to be used, according to The Times of India and other media outlets.
T1 is said to have been shot dead by Ashgar Ali Khan, son of India’s most famous hunter Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, who was meant to be leading the hunt but was not present on Friday night.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests A.K. Mishra told The Indian Express newspaper that a forest worker had managed to dart the tiger with a tranquilliser at around 11pm.
“But she charged at the team, forcing Ashgar to shoot in self-defence,” he said. “The tigress lay dead in a single shot.”
However Mishra’s account was contradicted by other reports, while many groups condemned the way the killing was conducted.
The Times of India quoted sources involved in the hunt as saying it looked as though a tranquilliser dart had been put into the tiger’s corpse after the killing. The sources said the dart had not been fired.
Forestry officials acknowledged to Indian media that no vet was present during the hunt, as required by the Supreme Court order.

Jerryl Banait, a vet and activist in Karnataka state who had launched appeals against the order, described the shooting as “cold-blooded murder”.
“Avni was killed illegally satisfying a hunter’s lust for blood,” said the Indian branch of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) group.
How a wild tiger killed two Hong Kong policemen … 100 years ago
It said India’s Wildlife Protection Act and National Tiger Conservation Authority rules had been flouted, calling for the matter to be “investigated and treated as a wildlife crime”.
The tiger’s body has been taken to a zoo in the city of Nagpur for a postmortem.

Despite the disputed circumstances, villages around the town of Pandharkawda celebrated the death with relief.
T1 claimed her first victim, a woman whose body was found in a cotton field, in June 2016. Since then most of the dead were male herders.
Tiger that killed four Indian villagers dies after straying into electric fence
India has launched a major campaign to boost tiger numbers. At the last tiger census in 2014 the number had risen to more than 2,200 from a low of less than 1,500.
But urban spread as the population of 1.25 billion grows has increasingly eaten into the territory of wild animals.
Endangered elephants and tigers kill on average one person a day, according to government figures.


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Conservation

Man-eating tiger shot dead in India after massive hunt, but details of killing disputed

The body of the tiger known as T1 or ‘Avni’ after being shot dead in the forests of India's Maharashtra state near Yavatmal. Photo: Maharashtra Forest Department/AFP

(FILES) This file picture taken on November 9, 2014, shows Indian forest officials taking part in a search operation for a tiger with the aid of an elephant in a paddy field at Bhumuraguri in Nagaon, some of 180 kms east of Guwahati. - An elephant that was part of a group hunting a man-eating tigress in western India ran astray overnight and trampled a woman to death, an official said on Ocotber 4. (Photo by Anuwar Hazarika / AFP)

(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 21, 2014 an Indian Bengal tiger looks on in a forest clearing in Kaziranga National Park, some 280km east of Guwahati in northeast India. - Controversy erupted November 3, 2018 over the killing of a man-eating tiger in India that had claimed 13 victims in two years but may have been illegally killed herself. (Photo by - / AFP)

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Legality of the animal’s killing questioned, with conservationists calling it ‘cold-blooded murder’


Legality of the animal’s killing questioned, with conservationists calling it ‘cold-blooded murder’.


India

Environment