S Senthil Kumar By

COIMBATORE: In a gruesome incident, a 50-year-old estate worker was killed by a tiger at Devashola in Gudalur Taluk of Nilgiris district on Friday night. The Forest Department has stepped up measures to trap the suspected man-eating tiger that ate the torso and hands of the man’s body.

The incident came to light on Saturday morning, when the victim’s family along with fellow estate workers began searching for Magu, a native of Jharkhand, as he had not returned home the previous night. They were shocked to find only his head and legs as the torso and hands had been eaten by the big cat. The animal had dragged his body deep inside the tea garden at Woodbriar Estate.

On information, Forest Department officials visited the spot and confirmed the tiger attack. They found pug marks inside the tea garden to corroborate the claim. As many as 40 members of the Special Task Force, Police and Forest Department are engaged in an operation to track the animal down. “We have placed three cages in core areas of the tea estate to trap the tiger. We are also planning to place two more in the coming days. We have set up as many as 14 cameras to monitor the movements of the man-eater,” said N S Tejaswi, District Forest Officer of Gudalur.

“The tiger had already killed two cows in the locality,” said N Sadiq Ali, founder, Wildlife and Nature Conservation Trust (WNCT).

Efforts are on to capture the animal alive.

“A doctors’ team is ready to tranquilize the animal. The pug mark findings indicate that the tiger could be a male. There are two reasons for the tiger to eat a man. One, the animal could have been displaced from its territory. Two, since the animal could not hunt for its prey, the man was an easy target,” Ali added.