Tigress, tigress burning bright

The Hindu

20-07-2025

Just past the vibrant fields, at the edge of the jungle in Chargaon village, a silence hangs in the air — not of peace, but of memory. On May 10, Vandana Gazbhiye, 50, a daily wage earner, had been resting after collecting tendu patta (Indian ebony leaves) near Maharashtra's Sindewahi forest area, around 3 kilometres from her village in Chandrapur district. It was 9:30 a.m. and the rain had thickened the undergrowth.
Suddenly, a tiger sprang out at her. 'I still can't get over it; I could have died,' says Gazbhiye, who wears a scarf to hide her baldness. The injury from the tiger attack had led to her shaving the rest of her hair off. 'I am afraid to step out now,' she adds. Chargaon is in the Brahmapuri division in the Chandrapur forest circle. It is closed to tourism, but frequented by tigers.
The Chandrapur forest circle, spanning over 4,081 sq. km., is home to 347 tigers, up from 191 in 2020, as per Chandrapur circle Forest Department data. Across Chandrapur, 166 villages are marked vulnerable by the department, across three forest divisions: Bramhapuri, Central Chanda, and Chandrapur. Another 106 are in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), part of the Chandrapur forest circle, with one village in the core area and the rest in the buffer. In these areas, people have lived in fear of being attacked over the past three to four years.
A month after the attack, Gazbhiye is still in pain and gets headaches. 'I wish I never had to go into the jungle, but poverty forces you,' says Gazbhiye, adding that she survived because one of the tiger's claws ripped into the tendu leaves she was carrying on her back.
Biologist Rakesh Arora, who works at the TATR, says a male tiger requires a minimum home range of 40 square km; today, at least four tigers share that space. With the forest area remaining the same, it has been fragmented by urbanisation: highways and expanding villages, cutting off tigers from prey. Farmers, tendu leaf and mahua collectors, gurakhi (shepherd community), and those working for the Forest Department within the jungle, are the most impacted by human-wildlife conflict.
In the first six months of 2025, up to 22 people have lost their lives, and 183 people have been injured in human-wildlife conflict, as per the Forest Department. In 2024, they say 27 people died and 165 people were injured, while in the past four and a half years, 929 people have been injured and 184 died.
Death and tiger rituals
On the same day that Gazbhiye was attacked, three women from Mendha (Mal) village, 4 km from Chargaon, were killed in an attack by the same tiger, later identified as T-81, as per the Forest Department. One of the deceased, Sarika Shende's son Dheeraj Shende (25), says, 'We are living with tigers like people live with dogs. They are everywhere. I saw a tiger this morning.' At Sarika's house in Mendha (Mal), where her photo is hung on the pink wall, her younger son, Atish Shinde (22), says he could see multiple pug marks in the area his mother was killed.
The officials documented the incident post-attack and set up a committee for approval to trap T-81 tiger and her cubs, who were then caught and sent to the Gorewada zoo in Nagpur, Maharashtra's third-largest city, about 140 km away. 'Tigers involved in conflict end up in the zoo, as no reserve or national park accepts them,' says veterinary officer (Wildlife) and head, Rapid Rescue Team, Dr. Ravikant S. Khobragade. 'A tigress kills for the protection of herself and her cubs rather than attacking humans. However, she is aggressive, and her cubs are naive and curious,' he adds.
In the last 12 years, the forest department has captured 94 tigers, with 41 found in conflict situations. Among them, 17 are females, 11 are subadults, and the rest are male tigers. 'Only 36 among the 94 were shifted to the wild, while 58 ended up in the zoo,' as per the study conducted by Khobragade.
Mendha (Mal)'s sarpanch, Shradha Gurnule, 26, has been raising concerns around these incidents with the forest department. She has asked for guards to go along with the tendu plucker group. In her sonorous voice, Gurnule recollects, 'Tigers used to be a rare sight in the village until a couple of years ago, despite its proximity to the forest. For the first time, someone was attacked in this village.'
Somewhere between Chargaon and Mendha (Mal) in Sindewahi block, on the side of the main road, idols of tigers are installed under thatched canopies. They depict the local ritual practised after people's relatives die in a tiger attack. There are three idols for Sarika, who was 50 when she died, and her friends. This ritual is sometimes observed so that the deceased rest in peace. 'This is for the peace of the village as well,' says Sarika's son Dheeraj. Many believe death by a tiger has to do with a person's previous life.
Troubled tigers and people
Chandrapur Chief Conservator of Forests, Manikanda Ramanujam says, 'The Forest Department is working on a war footing to prevent human-wildlife conflict. We are interacting with Gram Sabhas to create awareness, taking initiatives to reduce the dependence of villagers on the forest, and using technology to monitor the movements of tigers in sensitive villages.'
A forest officer in Chandrapur says that in five years the conflict is only going to increase if appropriate steps are not taken. 'Earlier, attacks used to happen mostly in the summer, but now they have extended to the entire year,' he says. Currently, the Brahmapuri division hosts the highest number of cubs at 67; sub-adults at 16; and females at 39.
Forest department officials believe most of the attacks are by female tigers and their sub-adults (between 1.5 and 2.5 years), who are pushed to live on the borders of the forest due to territorial fights, mostly among males, but sometime among females too.
'The problem lies in the buffer zone (of TATR) and territorial area (Chandrapur's three zones not a part of TATR), where food is low and competition among tigers is high, because of urbanisation and land fragmentation,' says Suresh Chopane, president at the non-profit Green Planet Society that promotes environmental awareness. He is also a former member of the Regional Empowered Committee of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and served on the Tadoba Tiger Conservation Plan.
The Forest Department says it has installed 982 camera traps across the circle for surveillance, and real-time monitoring is carried out using stealth cameras to alert villagers. They also say they have 181 Primary Response Teams with 917 members, while joint patrols are conducted to prevent tigers and wildlife from getting electrocuted. 'We are also notifying villagers of the locations where there are frequent movements of tigers,' says Kushagra Pathak, a forest officer in charge of TATR (Buffer).
Livelihood and conflict
In the monsoon, Chandrapur's forest is thicker than usual on both sides of the road that leads from Sindewahi block to Mul block, 30 km away. In Chitegaon — a village of 1,200 people, most farmers — a tiger called TF3 killed Sheshraj Nagose (32), the son of a paddy farmer Pandurang Nagose (65).
Outside his house, where his hens wander around, Pandurang shows a photo of his son on his mobile phone, taken after the attack. 'We are confined to our homes. We can't walk, travel alone at night, or go to our farms for routine work. Allowing children to travel alone to school is scary,' he says.
After Sheshraj's death, his wife got a daily wage job at Rajoli forest depot, earning a monthly ₹14,000, while the family was given a compensation of ₹25 lakh. Chitegaon villagers want high fences across all the farms as tigers usually attack when people are either bending over or sitting.
However, villagers complain that they are also fearful of their cattle being attacked. 'Cattle are expensive to buy, and we face huge losses if tigers take them, even though there is compensation,' says Mirabai Uikye (70) from Chitegaon, who says she has lost several animals, including a hen recently. According to the data, 3,416 cattle were killed from January 2024 to June 2025.
In another village, 2 km from Chitegaon, is Maregaon, where farmer Maruti Karanshya (25) was injured on June 26. He went to the local government hospital and was discharged on June 30, but says tiger injuries are getting worse, and the hospital is ill-equipped. 'They live in a high-risk area, yet the primary healthcare centre does not have the basics, like immunoglobulin injections to prevent infections,' his relative adds.
Khobragade admits, 'We do fall short in some areas, but government policies are working to strengthen healthcare services,' he says.
Pathak says, 'One of the biggest challenges is that people do not listen, despite giving them safety instructions. However, in the coming year, we won't open the tender for areas that have more casualties and movement of tigers.'
Tourism tames the tigers
In TATR, around 3.5 to 4 lakh people visit Tadoba every month, says the Forest Department. Although tiger tourism generates local jobs, it also has a negative impact on locals, as excessive tourism can disrupt the natural behaviour of tigers.
Former member of the State Board of Wildlife, Yadav Tarte Patil, says, 'Tigers have become used to people. If a tigress with four cubs sees hundreds of humans, the fear vanishes. Fear is one of the key elements for co-existence.'
However, TATR officials say tourism will decrease the dependency of people on the forest. Currently, many villagers are dependent on forest produce, like tendu and mahua. Forest officer Pathak says,
'TATR has 17 gates, which require guards; then there are drivers, cleaning staff, and many indirect employment possibilities. We employ thousands of people and at least 600 to prevent poaching.'
Chopane recommends that tourists not be allowed at mating spots, attack spots, and the sub-adults' resting spots. In the long run, he says, the forest department should work on the conservation of fragmented forests to create underpasses for animals.
The villagers have asked for the shifting of tigers, which the veterinarian has ruled out, as tigers can be stressed due to a new geographical area. Besides, Maharashtra has shortcomings in the mapping of tigers, which could probably help with relocation, he says. 'Sterilisation will disturb the ecosystem, so we need to experiment with reverse population, causing a 1.5-year delay in reproduction,' says Khobragade.
He says the setting up of rewilding centres in Chandrapur to rehabilitate the cubs captured in human-wildlife conflict, is a good idea. 'The cubs in zoos deserve a chance to be in the wild and survive,' he adds.
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Edited by Sunalini Mathew