Two Years After Mother Was Shot Dead, Rescued Cub Of Tigress Avni Released Back Into The Wild

The killing of the alleged maneater tigress Avni in 2018 was one of the most controversial such actions in India in recent times and still remains a topic that is highly debated.

But in some good news, one of her cubs which was rescued after Avni was shot dead has been released back into the wild.

PTR

The female cub was released into the wild in the Pench Tiger Reserve (PTR) of Maharashtra''s Nagpur district after over two years of "re-wilding" efforts, authorities said.

Tigress now 3.2 years old

The tigress, now aged around 3.2 years old, which is an adult and has been named as PTRF-84, was released on Friday, Chief Conservator of Forests and Field Director of the PTR said in a release.

She was been brought to Pench Tiger Reserve as an orphaned cub on December 22, 2018, following a rescue operation, over a month after Avni was shot dead. After that, she was housed in the 5.11 hectares of enclosure for over two years, where she was reared/re-wilded as per the standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

BCCL

An expert committee supervised her entire rewilding experiment and as per its decision, a proposal was sent to the NTCA for her release, which was approved.

Tiger was radio-collared

Before her release, the tigress was radio-collared with the help of scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

"Further monitoring of the tigress will be carried out with the help of field formation and satellite tracking. Although we cannot predict how this tigress will behave in the wild, the forest department has taken the best of efforts to re-wild the animal using systematic re-wilding techniques," a Forest Department release said.

PTR

What's the controversy surrounding Avni?

Avni, officially named T-1, a resident tigress of Pandharkawada in the Yavatmal district of Maharashtra landed in trouble with humans after she was blamed for 13 human kills between 2016 and 2018, a charge which has not been proven beyond doubt.

As the protests from locals grew, the Maharashtra government initially tried to capture and relocate it. But as the efforts failed, the Supreme Court ordered that the animal be tranquilized and transported elsewhere, failing which the authorities were given permission to kill her.

BCCL

The hunt for Avni was led by Shafath Ali Khan, a sharpshooter and a highly controversial hunter.

On March 2, 2018, the team led by Khan finally zeroed in on their target and the five-year-old tigress was shot dead from near a road in Borati village by Asgar Ali Khan, son of sharp-shooter Shafath Ali Khan, even as environmentalists were making desperate attempts to save her life.

Avni was killed, leaving her two cubs, then 10 months old as orphans.

Last week, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain a plea seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against Maharashtra Chief Secretary Vikas Kharge and other state officials for announcing reward to people who had killed 'Avni'.

The Chief Justice said that in an earlier litigation, the decision to kill the tiger was given by the court as the tigress was proved to be a man eater. "The state government has submitted a report in this regard which was accepted by the court," said the bench.