Male tiger ustaad T-24 killed forest gaurd in Ranthambore

[Sully]

Maneater tiger who killed 4 humans sentenced life in zoo
By Dr. Anuj Pahal -
Updated:
March 30, 2016

SHARE

Facebook

Twitter

*This image is copyright of its original author

Th Supreme Court has jailed a Ranthambore Tiger named ‘Ustad’ or T-24 for killing four humans in five years. The verdict of life sentence came as a surprise to many as they believe that extending such hard punishments to the animal world is unfair and against the India’s ‘Save Tiger’ campaign.
The verdict was given by a bench of three justice including Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justices R Banumathi and UU Lalit. Challenging the decision, Tiger conservationist Ajay Dubey, through senior advocate Indira Jaising said that claiming Ustad to be a maneater is extremely hard decision as no proofs are present to prove it.
There have been four human killings associated with the Ustad in past five years, but no one has ever seen T-24 killing a human. Everytime, Ustad was found roaming around the body when officials figured out the dead body.
In addition, Jaising opposed the court’s decision to shift the T-24 from Ranthambore to hundreds of kilometers away in Sajjangarh Zoological Park in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
While appealing she explained the judges that there is a huge difference between a maneater where a tiger hunts human habitually and tigers who are forced to kill humans due to an encounter by chance. In all the four occasions, Ustad killed humans by chance.
“There is a difference between a man-eater tiger which habitually hunts humans, and tigers who may have had a chance encounter with humans primarily due to provocation by humans. Tigers involved in chance encounters are not to be removed from their natural habitat and evidence against T-24 can be at best attribute his involvement in chance encounters,” she said.
On the lack of evidence remark made by Jaising, the bench of court said that we don’t need evidence whether the tiger killed humans or not as it will not roam around to body to guard, killing humans is his natural instinct. Judges further added that Ustad will keep on killing humans if not barred. Thus, T-24 will keep on entertaining the crowd in Sajjangarh Zoological Park. Reply