Avni: Inside the Hunt for India's Deadliest Maneater

By Nawab Shafath Khan

In 2018, news that a tigress named Avni had been shot dead in Yavatmal, Maharashtra, went viral online. When the saga played out on national media, the hunters were denounced as ruthless and bloodthirsty.
However, there was more to the story.

For, the tigress T1, as Avni was originally named, was a man-eater blamed for 13 killings. For over two years, she had spread fear over 150 square kilometres of rural Yavatmal, prompting more than 10,000 people to shut themselves inside their homes at night. Several attempts by the forest department to capture the animal alive had proved futile, and the authorities finally brought in hunters as a last resort.

Now, for the first time, Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, the man who led the operation to neutralise T1, reveals the true story behind the biggest man-eating tiger operation in post-independent India. While painting a deeply empathetic portrait of the complexities of human­­–animal conflicts, Khan also raises important questions about the state of conservation in India.

Heart-stopping and eventually tragic, Avni tells the story of a tigress pushed to her limit and of the man tasked with stopping her at all cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jun 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9789354355752

Book preview

INTRODUCTION:

THE BEGINNING OF TERROR

‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’

—William Blake

A man-eating tiger is like a wraith, a vengeful ghost that haunts the nightmares of children and grown-ups alike as it chalks up its kills and disappears like a wisp of smoke.

The morning of 10 April 2015 began like any other day in Borati village in Yavatmal district, Maharashtra. Borati, like most villages in the region, is surrounded by patches of forest. Cultivated fields abound, along with border scrubland, which leads towards forests of sal. That Friday morning, villagers found four of their cattle mysteriously dead about 2 km away, on a dry riverbed. The villagers were confused, for none of the cattle had been consumed. There had been occasional tigers, bears and leopards in the forests around them, and they had at times lost some animals to the predators, but no one knew of four head of cattle being killed at a single time.

The villagers marched to the forest range officer to report the matter. A high-level forest team arrived to investigate the mysterious killings and discovered that a young tigress had entered the area and killed the cattle. But tigers are not wanton killers. They kill once a week on average, and it is highly unusual for a tiger to kill four head of cattle one after the other and not consume them. This was the first indication of the tigress’s abnormal behaviour and its eventual turn towards man-eating.

In my opinion, a man-eating tiger or leopard may not be a normal animal from a psychological perspective. They have a streak of abnormality that grows with time. Killing four cows and not consuming any of them was the initial stage of the tigress’s aberrant behaviour. While tigresses are known to kill more than one prey at a time when training their cubs, this reasoning did not apply to T1 as it had no cubs at the time. Further, the forest officers were concerned that the tigress had killed the cattle, but not consumed them. This was in complete departure from established tiger behaviour.

Tigers have a short gestation period of just 111 days. On average, they are known to give birth to two to four cubs at a time. In Maharashtra, a tigress has given birth to five cubs recently. With such a short pregnancy period and each litter consisting of two to three cubs, there is no way tiger numbers can dwindle unless there is something terribly wrong in the system. The newborn cubs are raised with utmost care and caution. They wean from the mother’s milk at around 6 months of age. At around 20 to 24 months, tigers habitually disperse to form new territories. Male cubs move further away from their father’s territories, while females usually share territory closer to their mothers. However, the rapid increase in tiger numbers in certain pockets of India, clubbed with rising human population pressures, has resulted in tigers being forced to travel further into human-dominated land to carve out their own territory. For example, in 2020, a tiger travelled over 500 km in 9 months between Maharashtra and Telangana, while the Brahmapuri tigress, which I write about in subsequent chapters, had travelled 520 km in 3 months. Similarly, the tigress that killed the four cattle in Borati had struck out to claim its own space. It was named T1 by the forest department. In India, the forest department regularly identifies animals by using such numbering. However, later on, the T1 came to be known as ‘Avni’.

A month later, on 23 May, a pony was reported to have been killed by a tiger near the first nala (a dry riverbed) of Borati village, about 9 km away. The traditional inhabitants of the area are nomadic tribals, who move from one pasture to another with their herds of sheep, goats and ponies. The unfortunate pony had been tied to a stump for the night. Around 3 a.m., the herders were woken up by a loud commotion and the barking of their dogs. The herders immediately got out of their makeshift tents and were met with a rude shock in the thin light of the approaching dawn. The rope that had been tied to the pony’s neck was broken, and the stump was ripped out of the ground. The pony itself was missing.

The herders saw tiger prints and bloodstains around the stump. The half-eaten carcass was discovered half a kilometre away, in a small rivulet that flowed down from where the nomads had pitched their tents, a dry hillock with boulders of all shapes and sizes strewn around. The pony’s neck was broken and twisted, indicating beyond doubt it had been killed by a tiger.

Immediately, the authorities set up camera traps around the kill to identify the predator. Much to their surprise, a massive tigress was caught in their frames. It was an adult in its prime, about 8.5 ft long. It seemed to be about 5 years old, with striking colouration. The overlay of black stripes across a dusky orange body, a bright white under-belly and a head almost 2.5 ft in circumference established its unmistakable identity. There were no visible deformities or any illness that could have caused the tigress to turn into a cattle lifter. The forest officials continued to be puzzled.

The cattle killings, however, were just the calm before the storm. Because a year later, T1 would turn its sights on humans.

Early on the morning of Wednesday, 1 June 2016, 60-year-old Sonabai Waman Bhosale went out into her cotton fields that had been harvested the previous day. Sonabai wanted to pick the last remaining cotton, which now hung like white powder puffs on the dry cotton shrubs. The morning sun peeked out from behind the white clouds, announcing a bright, new dawn. The monsoon rains were expected within a fortnight, and a welcome hint of rain was already in the air—a sign of latent joy and hope to people bound to their land and to the earth. These rains would bring much-needed relief to barren lands, reviving and clothing them in lush and verdant foliage for a brief spell. But there was little joy for the people of Borati that year.

Sonabai walked to the fields as she had done for the many years since she had first come to Borati as a young bride. Only this time, she never returned.

Her daughter, Alka Pawar, told me the family first missed the matriarch at lunch, when the entire family came together to eat, as most families in the region do. Wondering at the delay, she went to summon Sonabai from the cotton fields, only to discover massive pug marks in the soil, with blood splattered around them. The brave girl—for she was alone—followed the pug marks and the blood for about 200 m before she came upon her mother’s body, bitten through the neck and clawed all over, though not eaten. Alka let out a scream. The dreaded man-eating tigress of Yavatmal had just killed her first human prey.

No one could have imagined then that this was just the beginning of a 2.5-year reign of terror across an area of 160 sq. km. Villagers would squirm inside their huts at night, all farming and commercial activities would halt and the great beast would haunt the lives of more than 21,000 people who lived in these 26 villages.

1

Man-eaters, Then and Now

Atiger is a magnificent animal, a migrant from the icy, snow-bound steppes and conifer forests of Central Asia. Their bearing is regal and strength immense. A tiger usually kills once a week, that is, around 52 kills in a year. After dragging its kill to a safe and shady spot, it consumes the prey over the course of two to three days, depending on the size of the animal. During this ‘feasting’ time, it does not kill any other animal, even if the opportunity presents itself. A tiger, in other words, is not a wanton killer. It is, in fact, a very shy animal that usually avoids attacking unprovoked. It kills according to its needs. If not, the hundreds of thousands of people who live in the forests and work on farms on the outskirts of jungles every day would not be able to do so.

A tiger is also, by nature, an elusive and private animal—it does not show itself in the open unlike a lion, which prefers an open habitat. A tiger needs adequate forest cover, a regular supply of water and a sufficient prey base to claim a territory. But with their increasing numbers, this basic necessity for their survival has gone haywire; thus, tigers are increasingly coming out of their natural habitats, triggering conflict with humans across the country. They were once poached rampantly, and although India can now claim to have the highest number of tigers in the wild, it is a cause for concern as their territories outside the forests increasingly overlap with human settlements.

Because a wild tiger prefers dense jungles or high forests, it is difficult to subdue a tiger by tranquillizing it. Further, when a tiger turns into a man-eater, it becomes more cautious and craftier and seldom shows itself. People often underestimate a tiger’s intelligence, especially when it turns to killing humans and begins to understand human behaviour. Most people, including specialists, often fail to understand this trait, as their experience comes from viewing tigers in national parks, where the animals are accustomed to seeing tourists and are, therefore, more relaxed in human company, sometimes even appearing to pose for the camera. But this is just one part of the whole picture. Tigers may appear to be calm and at peace with the world, but in reality, a displaced tiger is an extremely stressed animal, and if it is starved of a substantial prey base, it turns into a most difficult adversary to deal with.

More than a hundred years ago, the Champawat tigress had terrorized the villagers of Kumaon and Nepal, and killed more than 400 people over 8 years. Even then, when wildlife had not been encroached upon by men to the extent that it is now, there was an acute shortage of hunters who had the expertise to venture into the field, read the forest and locate a man-eater on foot. Jim Corbett, who eventually killed the tigress, noted that hunting man-eaters was as difficult at the time as climbing the Everest. Corbett was a rare sportsman who grew to acknowledge the decline of tigers due to hunting and became an ardent conservationist. But today, when hunting itself has become a relic of the past, what does one do when a man-eater begins to terrorize thousands of people if no means of capture are possible? Further, people today are no longer as tolerant of wild animal predations as they were earlier—every year, umpteen reports emerge of tigers and other predators being poisoned, electrocuted or clubbed to death. As per information obtained under the RTI Act, between 2012 and 2018, 27 tigers were electrocuted to death, while 32 were poisoned, across India. Between 2006 and 2018, 14 problematic tigers were shot dead, of which one was a cattle lifter while the others were all man-eaters. However, as per a shocking press release, India recorded an all-time high in tiger casualities—126 deaths in the year 2021—caused by poisoning, electrocution and territorial fights.

In my opinion, man-eaters constitute less than 1 per cent of the tiger population in the country. Of course, there are more instances of leopards turning man-eaters than tigers. The reasons for the tigers turning to man-eating are varied.

If you were to ask me, the rise in tiger numbers in certain pockets together with our growing population is one of the primary reasons why humans and animals are increasingly coming into conflict. India today has a high density of tigers in states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, far beyond the carrying capacity of its forests, some areas of which lack a sufficient natural prey base. New areas colonized by tigers in 2018 constituted 25,709 sq. km as per a report on the status of tigers in India. In Maharashtra, in the year 2006, there were 103 tigers, and the numbers have increased to 168 in 2010, 190 in 2014 and 312 in 2018. Now it is at 352, excluding cubs that are less than one year old. Only the Vidarbha landscape houses 635 leopards.

In my opinion, about one-third of the tiger population in the country is thriving outside the government-controlled forests. These stray tigers are not only outside the safety zone of the forest, but are also forced to survive on domestic animals due to the lack of a prey base. The constant exposure to humans diminishes the natural fear barriers, putting the life of the locals in jeopardy. This is the state of India’s 900-odd displaced tigers today. The Maharashtra government is even thinking of castrating males to reduce the breeding cycle and control their population. At the same time, India’s human population has risen from 82 crore in 1987 to 139 crore today as per information available on the internet.

Most national parks in India—including Corbett, Bandipur, Mudumalai, Wayanad and Tadoba—have reached a saturation point in terms of their tiger population. Even the shockingly low ideal density of one male tiger in

30 sq. km has gone haywire due to the increase in their numbers, and juvenile and aged tigers are increasingly being pushed out of rich prey base areas into barren and dry forests outside these parks. Therefore, most of the man-eaters handled by us were displaced young and relatively healthy animals, be it the man-eater tigress of Brahmapuri that we tranquillized and captured safely or the man-eater tigress of Faizabad or T1 Avni of Yavatmal or the man-eating leopards of Thunag and Chalisgaon. Further, in an overpopulated country like India, a displaced tiger finds itself face to face with humans in the buffer forests and agricultural landscapes. This is the crux of the human–animal conflict in India today. India just cannot afford to have any more tigers in several of its protected areas, where tiger density has reached alarming levels of one tiger per 10 sq. km.

When Project Tiger was launched in April 1973, important facts about space and prey base for more tigers were completely eclipsed in the decision-making process. Today, because of better conservation, we face a problem of ‘plenty’. I do not agree with the prognosis that our core forests have been encroached on or cleared. It does not happen, as the boundaries of forests are well protected. Rather, the forests that have grown spontaneously outside protected areas are being burdened to feed more and more hungry Indians. But to a tiger, such boundaries—whether the land is a core forest or a buffer one, private land or belongs to the state—do not matter. Having stalked several man-eaters across the country, in the human-dominated landscapes of the sugarcane belt of Pilhibit, Uttar Pradesh, the outer arm of Corbett National Park and the hot plains of central India over years, I have come to the conclusion that a tiger, by its very nature, is a wanderer. It wanders over large stretches of land without any set road map in mind. Tigers commonly travel long distances in search of prey, territory and a mate, often trespassing into the human landscape with catastrophic implications.

Long before the four head of cattle were killed in Borati, there were reports of a tigress on the prowl in the scrub forests near Marki in Zari Jamni Taluka of Yavatmal. This was in 2014. But there were no reports of any conflict there. The tigress continued to move, travelling 60 km to the Ralegaon and Pandharkawada region, where it came to be known as T1. T1 had moved into human-dominated land surrounded by patches of forest, which offered it neither the comfort of a protected area like a tiger reserve nor a sufficient prey base to ensure a good meal. In other words, life for T1 was constant stress. Sharing territory with its new companions, the two-legged humans, and feeding on their cattle gradually eroded the natural barrier of fear that nature had erected between beast and man. And when it killed Sonabai on that Wednesday morning in 2016, the tigress came to regard humans as it did any other natural prey. Hell had broken loose.

Here, spare a thought for the villagers who lived in the shadow of the man-eater. Perhaps the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented and indefinite lockdown can give one an inkling of what villagers in the terror-stricken region of Maharashtra experienced because of T1.

Picture this: for more than 2.5 years, 26 villages went into virtual lockdown; more than 21,000 people were distraught and their lives came to a halt because all daily activities were paralysed; 14 innocent lives were lost (one of which was the result of shoddy policy, as we shall see), which left behind a grieving trail of widows and orphans. T1 killed 109 livestock, as well as several horses and ponies belonging to nomadic tribes. Forest vehicles were set ablaze by frustrated villagers. There were riots and roadblocks; all farming, including the cotton crop, came to a complete standstill, with no one willing to go to the fields by themselves; schools were shut indefinitely. This is besides the media attention, the publicity-hungry misguided conservation activists, a forest department that was under immense pressure, several court cases and the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s (NTCA) casual policies that had no timeline to end the terror of a man-eater, allowing the operation to drift for years together, putting the lives of thousands of forest dwellers, farmers and tribals in jeopardy. Add the frenzied activity on ground zero to this mix.

Besides the top-ranking forest officers, over 200 personnel, armed with 150 camera traps and thermal drones, were mobilized. Panchayat resolutions banned the entry of forest officers in Sarati, Loni and Tejani villages until T1 and its cubs were removed. More than a hundred vehicles, cages and bait were put in place to assist with the operation. Pits and chain-link enclosures were put up to trap T1. There were veterinary officers from various states, along with sniffer dogs and trained elephants. All of them had a single purpose—to find the elusive tigress. The human killing went on for over two years, from 1 June 2016 to 2 November 2018, the longest and most expensive operation of its kind in recent times.

Finally, after 12 failed attempts at tranquillizing the tigress and spending about ₹10 crore of taxpayers’ money, I was summoned to Yavatmal. By the time we were called in, the tigress had already killed nine villagers and wounded another. My team was involved in the entire operation for just 45 days. Word was that the tigress had found a mate that was sharing in its gory human bounty.

It would not be an exaggeration to say T1 was by far the most well-known and controversial tigress in India after Independence. Depending on whom you ask, the tigress was either a demonic serial man-eater that locals wanted relief from in any manner or a hapless mother of two cubs that was put