Inside the Heartbreaking and Controversial Hunt for a Tigress Who Allegedly Killed 13 People

On a dreary morning in April 2015, the villagers of Pandharkawada in the Yavatmal district of Maharashtra state in western India woke up to find four of their cattle dead on a dry riverbed. This was no ordinary event. Bears and leopards in the area might occasionally kill livestock, but four cattle being killed on the same day without being eaten was unheard of, until then. The villagers informed forest officials, only to have their suspicions confirmed: The cattle were killed by a new tiger in the area.

Then, the human killings began. A 60-year-old woman who had gone to pick cotton in the fields was later found dead with bite and claw marks across her neck. A seven-year-old boy was dragged from his home. Another woman who was also picking cotton heard a growl, only to see a tiger dragging away her 70-year-old husband by his neck. The villagers were told that their tormentor was called T1. Wildlife lovers called her Avni.

“In my forty years of experience, I have noticed that any man-eater animal is not normal from a psychological perspective,” Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, a 64-year-old civilian hunter, who led the operation that killed Avni, told VICE. “Man is not the natural prey of these animals. When a tiger cub is born, its mother prompts it never to go near a human being.”

Avni’s capture and death, however, opened a can of worms. 

Was Avni really responsible for the killings of 13 humans? And, if she was, why wasn’t she captured sooner? Why did repeated efforts to tranquilise her fail, costing the government more than Rs 130,000 ($1.6 million)? Why wasn’t there a veterinarian or biologist present for the operation, when the NTCA (National Tiger Conservation Authority, a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change) guidelines suggest having at least three experts, so that one person can monitor the animal’s vital signs after the animal has been darted and the immobilisation procedure is followed by the other two on board? Why did the team not have a crate or net to place the animal in after immobilisation? Why do animal rights activists refer to the operation as “a cold-blooded murder?”

To address the controversies surrounding the operation from his perspective Khan, who has been labelled a “trigger-happy hunter” by his detractors, has recently come out with the book, Avni: Inside the Hunt for India’s Deadliest Maneater, published by Bloomsbury.

Khan ascribes the reasons a tiger turns into a man-eater to hunger, injury, or psychological disorders. Another reason, according to him, is India’s increasing  tiger population, as there isn’t adequate land for them to inhabit, coupled with a loss of prey base. Khan isn’t off the mark. According to a 2018 census by the NTCA, and supported by the Wildlife Institute of India, India has 25 percent of the world’s tiger habitat, with 50 designated tiger reserves, but shelters 75 percent of the global tiger population, thus pointing to a shrinking habitat. It bears mentioning that the survey, carried out once every four years, doesn’t reveal how many of these animals die prematurely, primarily because of that shrinking habitat, as conservationists point out. 

“I am called on the ground when everything else fails and we have to start the operation afresh,” said Khan. “In Avni’s case, the forest officials didn’t even have a map of the killings. We tracked Avni on foot for days together, which was never done before we came on the scene.”

Khan added that he has never shot a wrong animal in forty years, a claim contested by animal rights activists, including Sarita Subramaniam – the co-founder of the Earth Brigade Foundation, a Mumbai-based NGO that works in the areas of wildlife conservation, street animal welfare, and women’s empowerment. Subramaniam has filed several petitions challenging the “man-eater” status of Avni and the inconsistencies in Khan’s Avni operation. 

“The word ‘man-eater’ was coined by the British,” Subramaniam told VICE. “It was hunting agents like Jim Corbett who popularised the term because we don’t find historical evidence of there ever being a man-eater. Tigers are carnivorous, stealth animals who will hunt. You can’t expect them not to be smart. When a farmer is killed, we need to ask whether he was supposed to be there. Was his farm encroaching core forest land? We just take these things at face value.” 

According to Subramaniam, the choice of Khan who has an “infamous track record” was questionable in and of itself. Various Indian states have roped in Khan to take down animals that seemed to pose threats to wildlife and humans. In 2016, he shot 250 nilgais (Indian gaur) under orders from the Bihar government, was accused of organising wildlife shootings for clients in a private safari in a national park, and was arrested in 1991 for alleged Maoist links.  

However, Khan maintains that he is just a “hangman” who follows orders from officials. “When people accuse me of being thirsty for blood, they don’t realise that the decision to kill is never mine.” 

Subramaniam said that it is unfortunate that the chief wildlife warden officer “can authorise literally anyone” to hunt an animal and the officer need not even provide a reason for the hunting orders. She added that Khan has no professional expertise in identifying the hunting patterns either. 

Avni’s alleged human killings followed no concrete pattern – they took place across seasons and age groups, and the period between two subsequent killings ranged anywhere from two weeks to two months. However, the orders to shoot her, after repeated tranquilising operations failed, were met with severe resistance by animal activist groups, with the High Court even staying the shooting order once. Things became even more complicated when Avni delivered two cubs in February 2018. The alleged killings, however, did not stop. 

“Avni kept getting smarter with every kill,” said Khan. “If I had been called after the first or second kill, the operation would have finished quicker. But two-and-a-half years was a great learning experience for her.” 

However, Subramaniam questioned such categorisation. “If Avni really wanted to only kill humans, what was she doing between two consequent human kills? Was she bipolar then?”

But why did she kill humans in the first place?

“It’s the same as a boy going to school in Texas who, one day, picks up his father’s handgun and kills 19 children,” said Khan. “There is a powerful streak of abnormality that runs through these man-eaters. Once you have identified this streak of abnormality, you need to get on with the operation to either radio-collar the animal or tranquilise it, but in India, we take years to even do this.” 

According to Section 11 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, “the Chief Wild Life  Warden may, if he is satisfied that any wild animal specified in Schedule I has become dangerous to human life or is so disabled or diseased, as to be beyond recovery, by Order in writing and stating the reasons therefor [sic], permit any person to hunt such animal or cause such animal to be hunted.” Schedule I lists animals that cannot be hunted or traded.

Subramaniam said that Avni’s kills, if any, were likely limited to shepherds and goatherds. “Most of the human kills happened in summer months when shepherds had to go deep into the forest to collect mahua flowers or firewood because of lack of easy availability of such plants in the villages,” she explained. “This is the same as venturing into a zone where I know for a fact that the army is practising shooting, and then complaining that I got shot and demanding compensation for it.”  

A subsequent probe report by the NTCA highlighted several lapses in the Avni operation. According to Khan’s official version of records, Avni was tranquilised first, upon which she attacked members of his team, and his son fired in self-defence. The NTCA report, however, states that the tranquiliser dart was fired by Mukbhir Sheikh, who was authorised only to identify Avni and her two cubs, and not dart her. Additionally, the darting took place in the absence of a doctor. “There was no wildlife manager, veterinarian, or biologist on the team,” the NTCA report added.

The state government of Maharashtra recently re-opened the probe into the operation in the wake of the NTCA report. Khan was also gifted with a silver tiger figurine by forest officials, which didn’t help his cause, as activists claimed the gesture as proof that the killing of Avni was no more than a trophy hunt.

Further, according to reports, no human remains were found in Avni’s stomach during the postmortem, something that Subramaniam finds striking. “It is strange that you can incriminate Avni for 13 human kills, and yet not have any conclusive medical or forensic evidence that connects her to all 13 kills, despite all the medical advances available to humans.”

“I have followed all the protocols and only acted on written orders,” Khan maintained. “Our wildlife activists simply don’t care about human life. What have they done for that woman who lost her seven-year-old grandson? To save one tiger or a leopard, they ignore how most villagers end up poisoning or lynching 10 other animals in rage.”

Wenzil Pinto, a wildlife biologist, noted that the DNA analysis, too, confirmed that less than six of the 13 alleged killings could be ascribed to Avni. Subramaniam added that no DNA analysis was done in the first five cases. The way Pinto sees it, one needs to understand the ethical and moral dimensions one attaches to a tiger, too. 

“From a conservation point of view, removing a ‘problematic’ animal from the habitat, either through killing or tranquillisation, may do more for conservation of the species because retaliatory killings by humans against all the animal species do exist,” Pinto told VICE. “But from an ethical point of view, is the tiger’s life more important than a human’s? How many human killings must warrant a tiger’s removal is an ethical question which does not have easy answers.” 

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