Labelled a “man-eater,” allegedly under pressure from the tourist lobby of Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan after it killed four people in five years, the mighty male tiger “T-24” known as “Ustad” is living in captivity in a small enclosed area without official sanction, an RTI query has revealed.
Ustad, who is 10 years old, was one of the major attractions of the national park till May 2015, when it killed its last human – a forest guard, the 57-year-old Rampal Saini.
The tiger was the “imprisoned” at the Sajjangarh Biological Park, Udaipur, a kind of zoo, around 400km from Ranthambore, and has remained there since.
The state administration has to take approval from the central government to keep an animal in permanent confinement. However, no such clearance was taken.
The Rajasthan government has also not provided a “compliance report” on the tiger’s proper upkeep, rendering Ustad a “fateless convict”, wildlife conservationists have said.
According to information obtained through Right to Information query, the Central Zoo Authority had twice reminded the Rajasthan forest authorities to seek permission for the permanent housing and proper management of T-24. However, the officials have not yet replied.
According to Rajasthan forest officials, the chief wildlife warden has the technical authority to shift any animal from the jungle to captivity if it poses a threat to humans.
“I was not holding the post at the time. But the chief wildlife warden under Section 12(B) of the Wildlife Protection Act can send an animal to the zoo if it poses a threat to human life,” a senior official of the Rajasthan Forest Department said.
The warden has temporary powers to shift an animal to the zoo. However, to shift an animal permanently, permission has to be sought from the central government, and it can be done only after a proper health report report of the animal.
Till he was taken away from Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in May 2015, Ustad was the most sighted tiger. But it was said to have become aggressive of late, exhibiting a change in behaviour.
He was not the only tiger in Ranthambore exhibiting such changes. Experts attribute this behaviour change to maximum intrusion and breach in the animal’s space due to excessive tourist inflow in Ranthambore. Ustad’s shifting was resisted by wildlife activists.
In March 2016, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking Ustad’s relocation, claiming its distress due to captivity. The court upheld the decision to keep it behind the bars.
It was, however, never proven that Ustad is a man-eater. The National Tiger Conservation Authority in a July 2015 report said there had been a considerable time gap between the tiger’s attacks on humans, which ruled out it being a man-eater.
Wildlife conservator and former field director of Sariska Tiger Reserve, Sunayan Sharma says that permission was not sought to move Ustad permanently because it would “expose” the incapability of the Sajjangarh Biological Park to house a tiger.
Former chief wildlife warden of Rajasthan R N Mehrotra also sees violation of norms set for better upkeep of the animals.
“There are violations going on. Without permission, its fate is like that of a convict in a permanent jail, but with the status of custodial detention,” Mahrotra said.
He added: “It was never proven that Ustad was a man-eater. To declare an animal man-eater, a consultation is done among the warden and Wildlife Institute of India, which in Ustad’s case never happened.”