A stray Bengal tigress was rescued yesterday morning near Khashitana camp of the Sundarbans. It is seven and a half feet in length and has one of its hind legs cut off from the knee joint, forest officials said.
Wife of Sujuddin, a fisherman at Angtihara village near the forest, saw it first around 6:00pm on Saturday when she entered her house. The tigress was there until the next morning.
The house owner spent the night outside the house waiting for a village tiger response team. Hundreds of villagers out of curiosity crowded around the house.
The village tiger response team reached the scene in the morning. It tranquillized the tigress and brought to Kolagachia camp safely within 30 minutes. At the time of filing of the report, the tigress was being taken to Dhaka forest office.
Today, it will be transferred to Dulahazari safari park.
“The six-year-old tigress was very weak because it was difficult for her to hunt with three legs,” said Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain, assistant conservator of forest (ACF), Sundarbans division, who tranquillized the tigress.
Seeing the leg injury, he said the tigress had lost the leg when it had been a cub of one or one and a half years.
Earlier, forest and Sundarbans Tiger Project officials captured another stray tiger on February 19 last year from Harinagar village of Shyamnagar upazila in Satkhira district. It was released into the Sundarbans and later found dead in the forest.
-With The Daily Star input
