The city national park has lost a 13-year-old Royal Bengal Tiger on Tuesday to renal failure, veterinarians who attended to the big cat said.
Renal or kidney failure is a condition in which the organs are unable to discharge waste and balance fluids.
Palash, who had been a resident of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) for the last 10 years, died around 3 am on Tuesday after a week-long illness.
SGNP is now left with seven tigers, including a 17-year-old male albino tiger — the oldest in the pack — and two tigers who were recently brought in from the Pench Tiger reserve, Maharashtra named Bijlee and Mastani.
Palash had been under the charge of an expert advisory committee of SGNP constituted of senior vets from the Bombay Veterinary College and retired SGNP veterinarians, who after examining him had prescribed a suitable line of treatment for his condition.
Accordingly, Palash was being given medicines and saline. However, for the last few days he had stopped eating and was surviving on salines and oral glucose supplementation. “Palash was suffering from acute renal issues and septicemia (an infection of the blood, also known as bacteremia or blood poisoning). His condition became critical in the last few days,” said Dr Shailesh Pethe, SGNP veterinarian.
The pathology department of Bombay Veterinary College conducted the post mortem on Tuesday morning.
The Asian Age on September 30 reported that the tiger had stopped eating food and was not well owing to urinary infection, which the SGNP officials, terming the sickness “routine” had blamed on the unexpected showers.
Palash who passed away at 3.15 am in the wee hours of Thursday was brought to the park from Vanvihar National Park in Bhopal on April 7, 2006. He was then a three-year-old animal.
“Following his illness, he was shifted to the medical cage on September 26,” a senior SGNP official said.
Palash was the father of two males Yash, Anand and one female Lakshmi.
The park is now left with Basanti, mother of the three, Bijlee and Mastani, and its lone white tiger. In October last year, 20-year-old Rebecca, a white tigress, had succumbed to cancer in the park. The life of tigers in captivity is generally around 14 to 16 years. Palash’s death is a great loss to the park,’ said Shailesh Deore, Range Forest Officer, SGNP.
