A 33-year-old man went missing, and when his family looked for him, they found his half-eaten body near a tiger reserve park.
Tiger Attacked, Killed A Man in India
Gokul Malik, 33, left home to work at a construction site in Bangawan village in Uttarakhand Sunday morning. However, his family was worried when he didn't return home that day.
Malik's family began to look for him. Unfortunately, they only found his half-eaten body, and based on the pawprints next to the corpse, the killer was a male tiger, according to local forest officials. The beast consumed 60 percent of his body, the Times of India reported.
Bhagawan village sits next to the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, located in the order of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand states. The park houses a range of large predators, including leopards, wolves, hyenas, and royal tigers.
Tiger Reserves in India Leads to Uptick in Human-Tiger Conflicts
India is the home of 60 percent of the global tiger population. However, it has already lost an estimated 93 percent of its historical range.
The big cats used to live freely all over the subcontinent, but the officials were forced to confine them due to the human-tiger conflicts.
The country will have 53 tiger reserves in 2022, PMF IAS reported. Pilibhit was one of the two tiger reserves in Uttar Pradesh. It has a total area of 730.2 square kilometers with a buffer area of 127. 45 square kilometers.
Under the protection of the parks, the number of tigers had reportedly risen by 33 percent in four years as of 2018, according to India's Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. However, some scientists have expressed doubts about the latest data.
The increase in the number of tigers has also led to more human-tiger conflicts because the tiger reserves were situated in areas where humans operate, Newsweek reported.
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Other Tiger Attacks Reported
In November 2022, another tiger attack was reported in Pradesh. A tiger mauled a 9-year-old girl named Poonam Gond to death while cutting paddy with her grandmother and sister in an agricultural field in Jaisinghnagar of Madhya Pradesh's Shahdol district.
The tiger attacked the girl and dragged her into the forest. The villagers and officials later discovered her lifeless body in the forest, Hindustan Times reported.
According to Poonam's grandmother, Terasiya Gond, the incident happened at 2:30 p.m. She reportedly heard Poonam scream and thought her granddaughter had just cut her hand with a sickle. However, when she turned to Poonam, she saw a tiger dragging her to the field.
Terasiya cried for help, and the villagers responded. However, their attempt to save Poonam failed when the tiger grabbed her and fled into the forest.
Meanwhile, another tiger attack happened at Puthuserry in Wayanad Thursday. Thomas alias Sallu, 50, was attacked by a tiger around 9:30 a.m. He was immediately taken to the nearby Manathavady hospital with a deep cut on his hands and legs.
He received preliminary first aid. However, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died, Mid-Day reported.
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