Avni, a 'man-eater' tigress, that had killed as many as 14 people in the last two years, was shot dead in Maharashtra's Yavatmal forest region in late Friday night. The six-year-old tigress along with her two cubs have consumed 60 per cent of a human corpse, according to the forest department. Avni, officially known as T1, is survived by her two cubs who are 10 months old. Her postmortem is scheduled to be conducted at Nagpur's Gorewada Rescue Centre on Saturday.
"Maharashtra: 'Man-eater' tigress Avni (T1) killed in Yavatmal last night. She had allegedly killed 14 people so far," the news agency ANI reported.
Read | 171 butterfly species recorded in Arunachal's Lower Subansiri district
Soon after the report of Avni's shoot-at-sight broke on the internet, locals in Yavatmal started celebrating as they can now breathe a sigh of relief.
The development came nearly two months after the Supreme Court had on September 12, refused to interfere with the Bombay High Court’s decision, which rolled out a shoot-at-sight order for the tigress, prompting a flurry of online petitions.
Wildlife activist Jerryl A Banait, who filed the petition before the court, contended that the Forest Department should capture the tigress alive, instead of killing, which is “illegal and arbitrary and deserves to be set aside”.
However, a Supreme Court bench, consisting of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta rejected the plea by NGO Earth Brigade Foundation challenging the September 6 order of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.
Read | Trains to slow down while passing through Rajaji Tiger Reserve
A special team of the forest department, equipped with the latest technology, was in a hunt for the tigress since last three months. They used 150 ground personnel, elephants, so-called expert trackers, shooters, trap cameras, drones, a pack of trained sniffer dogs and a hang-glider to trap the tigress.
Avni was first spotted in the Ralegaon forest area of Yavatmal district in 2012 and further rambled in Pandharkawda forest and many other places across Maharashtra.
/newsnation-english/media/agency_attachments/2024-07-23t155806234z-logo-webp.webp){kind=logo}
Follow Us/newsnation-english/media/post_attachments/images/2018/11/03/Avni-955272712.JPG)