Daily wage worker with forest department killed in tiger attack in Chandrapur

Chandrapur: A 54-year-old daily wage worker of the forest department was mauled to death by a tiger in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district on Thursday morning, a forest official said.

The victim, identified as Rambhau Hanwate, was apparently cleaning an area near Nimdela gate in Khadsangi forest range under a buffer zone of the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve when the big cat dragged him to a forest.

The forest staff alerted the range officials who reached the spot for an inspection.

They later recovered the body from the forest area, the official said.

"The forest department will provide a financial aid to the kin of the deceased as initial compensation after post-mortem formalities. The actual compensation will be given after the paper work," the official said.

Amid the rise in cases of man-animal conflict in Chandrapur, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) last year approved relocation of some tigers from the Brahmapuri forest division here to the Nawegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve nearby, a senior forest official earlier said.

A proposal sent to the principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) in Nagpur had also suggested other measures to prevent man-animal conflict, like creation of public awareness in sensitive villages of Chandrapur, putting up posters, distribution of pamphlets, and installation of thermal sensors/virtual fences/high resolution cameras on an experimental basis to provide information to villagers about the movement of wild animals, he said.

The other steps mentioned in the proposal were construction of fence on the forest boundary of some highly sensitive villages in the Brahmapuri division, to set up a rescue team as soon as possible and hiring a biologist on an honorary basis to track specific tigers in the district, the official said.