Jai, The Cattle Killer of Umred Karandla wild life Sanctuary
This is the story of the Iconic Tiger Jai, one of the biggest tiger in Asia. Jay and Veeru were two siblings of Dendu who ruled the Navegaon Nagzira Tiger Reserve (approximately 653.56 square kms), when these two brothers were nearing adulthood and needed females to mate, but there was none.
Veeru was poached and the excuse of him missing from the Jungle was that, he migrated to the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh.
There was a female tigress named Alfa with two cubs in the Umarzari zone of NNTR. On 6th of June 2012, there was a fierce fight between Jai and Alfa for mating at Gaikhuri. Alfa was with two cubs, lactating and nursing the cubs, and hence was not ready to mate.
There are two stories prevailing about the migration of Jai from NNTR to Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary, one as per the locals especially the Gypsy’s drivers and the local tourist guides, Jai was tranquilized by the forest department and Trans located to the Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary.
The other story as per the forest department is that Jai migrated to Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary from NNTR on his own, looking for a mate walking 150 kms ,crossing National Highway, swimming across the Goshikurd Dam and reached Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary and formed his own territory. Here Jai sired more than 20 cubs, cohabiting 03 tigresses. The Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary, housing small hamlets, where the inhabitants are engaged in farming and cattle rearing with hardly any prey base, became a tourist hotspot due to frequent sighting of Jai and it’s off springs and its connectivity from Nagpur.
As mentioned absence of prey base and presence of hamlets with good cattle population became a comfortable territory for the Jai and his family. Jai and his off springs became cattle killer, the credit also goes to the forest department who started tying cattle as a bait to lure Jai to the spot to showcase him to the bigwigs, whom I would not like to name. One night jai and his offspring killed 30 cattle; for sure it was not for hunger but for fun.
A cattle killer has a very short life span in a Jungle inhabited by the villages and cattle. As a result of revenge killing Jai was killed, Its is also spoken that the department was regularly collaring Jai for scientific research, for its enormous body size, and he died due to regular darting and overdosing by the scientist from Wild Life Institute of India, Dehradun.
To hush up all the above mentioned facts that, 1) Jai being Trans located from NNTR to Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary without assessing the prey base.
2) Jai being turned into a cattle killer by the forest department, by using cattle as bait.
3) regular harassment and torture due to tranquilization, leading to death due to cardio vascular failure, due to overdose of anaesthesia, in the absence of a regular trained wild life veterinarian, Jai’s carcass was burnet in a paddy field by the forest department and his absence was spread as his migration into Telangan in search of new territory.
Similarly his son Shrinivas was killed and the fear psychosis led to the dispersion of most of the Tigers from Umred Karandla wild Life Sanctuary. No tiger, No tourism resulted into lots of hue and cry by the people whose livelihood depended on tourism.
To keep the investigation alive Avril Khambatta Thakur, president Himalayan Explorers organized a wild life picture exhibition for one full week with the caption “Jai we Miss”. Lot of pressure was built to halt the exhibition, more than 07 years have passed but still there is no trace of Jai. Recently I came to know that a C.I.D. enquiry is underway to find the cause of Jai missing.
