Mumbai: The Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court on Thursday quashed a shoot-at-sight order against a tigress of Chandrapur’s Brahmapuri forest suspected of killing two persons, dubbed as a “man-eater”. The court agreed with the contentions of a petitioner who had pointed out that the deaths occurred in the reserved jungle/buffer zone, where humans cannot enter normally. The court berated the forest authorities for their casual approach with regards to tiger conservation.
A division bench of Justices B.P. Dharmadhikari and Rohit Deo was hearing a petition filed by Dr Jerryl Avinash Banait, a medical practitioner and a wildlife enthusiast after he came to know of the forest authority order claiming that the tigress was not at fault as the victims had entered a non-permissible area.
The Maharashtra principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) had issued the shoot-at-sight order against the tigress on June 23 after she was suspected to have killed two persons and injured two others. Dr Jerryl had challenged the order to kill the tigress, a ‘T-27 cub-1’ under the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972.
“Two deaths caused by the tigress occurred in the reserved jungle/ buffer zone, where humans cannot enter normally. The illegal entry of humans in reserved jungle/ protected area is violation of section 9 of the WLPA, 1972. Hence, the tigress should not be labelled as a man-eater,” the petitioner said.
Counsel for the forest department, Ketki Joshi, admitted that the tigress could not be treated as a man-eater. The court accepted the petitioner’s arguments and quashed the PCCF order.
