The tiger’s victims are said to have included a 12-year-old girl.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, NEW DELHI — Indian police shot and killed a tiger the so-called “Champaran Man-eater” who killed at least nine people. The shooting succeeded in a major operation involving 200 people, including elephant trackers.

The big cat has been terrorizing local residents on the outskirts of Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Champaran, eastern India, killing at least six people over the past month, including a woman and her eight-year-old son on Saturday .

The male tiger was confirmed to be around 3-4 years old. Because it had killed an Indian citizen, local authorities allowed the beast to be put down after the tiger’s first attempt to pacify it failed.

“Two teams went into the jungle with the two elephants on Saturday afternoon and the third waited where we thought the tiger would come out and we fired five rounds to kill it there,” the police chief said. local Kiran Kumar at 10).

“With local villagers pounding the tin cans, it took a team of eight snipers and about 200 forest department officials to pull off the operation,” Kumar said.

Officials say the vast sugarcane fields make it easy for the tigers to hide and attack local villagers and their livestock. “Among the victims was a 12-year-old girl who was dragged from her bed on Wednesday evening,” the report said.

Local residents of impoverished villages around a nature reserve in Bihar state shut down overnight after the tiger’s first attack paralyzed a teenager last May.

However, despite the fear that lurked in the clutches of the tiger, it was impossible for the inhabitants to continue to confine themselves. “Because we have to feed our cattle,” said Ram Kisun Yadav, a local villager.

After the beast was put down, the locals celebrated. “Those days were sleepless nights for the whole village. We keep hitting the canister to hunt the tiger if it hides near our village,” villager Paltu Mahato said.

Conservationists blame the rapid expansion of human settlements around forests and key wildlife corridors for animals such as elephants and tigers. This has caused an increase in human-animal conflict in parts of India.

According to government figures, nearly 225 people were killed in tiger attacks between 2014 and 2019 in India. More than 200 tigers were killed by poachers or electrocuted between 2012 and 2018.

India is home to around 70% of the world’s tigers and the tiger population is estimated at 2,967 in 2018.