A day after four tiger cubs were found dead in Pathri area in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, the forest department has launched a major exercise to locate the whereabouts of the tigress, is suspected either to have abandoned the young ones or might have been killed by poachers.
Acting speedily on the issue, the Maharashtra government has formed a Special Investigation Team that will include officials of the forest department, the police and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Meanwhile, the post-mortem and other investigations conducted on the dead tiger cubs — two males and two females — have revealed that they were starved to death plus the winter conditions.
The post-mortem was conducted at the Veterinary Hospital at Chandrapur. Viscera samples collected are being sent to the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology at Hyderabad for further investigations.
Published 28 December 2015, 19:52 IST