The 20-year-old man is confronted by the white tiger inside its enclosure at the Delhi Zoo yesterday.
Agencies/New Delhi
A white tiger yesterday attacked and killed a youth who apparently jumped into its enclosure at a zoo in New Delhi.
Witnesses said the tiger grabbed the young man by the neck as horrified onlookers at the National Zoological Park screamed and threw sticks and stones to try to save him.
One witness said he raced to the enclosure after hearing screams to see the victim locked in the tiger’s jaws, “writhing badly in pain.”
“He kept suffering for the next 10-15 minutes, but nobody helped him,” Himanshu, who only gave one name, told the CNN-IBN news channel.
The incident happened between 12.30pm and 1pm.
The head of the zoo said that a guard posted at the enclosure raised the alarm, but the victim was dead before anything could be done.
“We do have tranquilising guns but they are at the zoo hospital. By the time we could have organised those, he was killed,” said zoo director Amitabh Agnihotri.
Witnesses had said the railings around the tiger enclosure were low and speculated that the victim may have fallen in.
But Agnihotri defended the zoo. “There are guards there. If we increase the height of the fencing, how will people be able to look at the animal?” he said.
A statement from the zoo said the victim was about 20 years old, contradicting earlier reports that he was a teenager.
He was later identified as Maqsood, a resident of Anand Parbat in Delhi.
One official said he also appeared to have been “under the influence of alcohol.”
“Security had tried to keep him away from the enclosure, but he somehow managed to jump in and the white tiger who was present at the enclosure leapt on to him,” junior official Rohit Kumar said.
“This is the first time such an incident has occurred in this enclosure.”
Photos posted online of the attack show the tiger standing over the victim, who was lying on the grass curled into a ball and trying to protect his head with his hands.
The victim’s body was lying in a corner of the enclosure, draped in a white sheet, while the tiger had been taken away and locked up.
The enclosure is separated from visitors by a concrete ditch, with shrubs on the tiger’s side followed by a 60cm railing.
Another witness said the tiger kept “roaming around” the enclosure, holding the victim by the neck.
“The tiger first caught his neck and then left him before coming back again and taking him to the other side (of the enclosure) by his neck,” Bitto, who only gave one name, told TV networks.
The zoo has three white tigers, although only one of them is let out into the enclosure daily for visitors to see, a zoo official said.
White tigers are found in southern and eastern Asia, particularly India, and owe their appearance to a recessive gene. They are regarded as an endangered species.
India is home to 1,706 Royal Bengal tigers and fewer than 100 white tigers, according to the last census in 2011. All the white tigers are in captivity.
Rampant poaching and loss of habitat due to human encroachment are cited as the major challenges to tiger conservation efforts.
The National Zoological Park, located in the centre of the capital and one of the oldest in the country, is spread over 176 acres. It is home to about 1,556 different birds and animals. Delhi Zoo sees footfalls of 5,000 to 6,000 on weekdays and 12,000 to 13,000 on weekends.
Six years ago, a similar incident had happened at the zoo when a man fell into the enclosure of a lioness. But luckily for him, the lioness spared his life. “The man was in an inebriated state and had jumped in front of the lioness. The lioness fortunately spared the visitor,” a zoo official said. The official said the lioness keenly watched the visitor but did not attack him. “All security measures were adopted and the lioness was somehow lured into her cage by us,” the official added. After being rescued, the man climbed a tree in fear. He came down after the zoo officials enticed him to. The following are a few incidents of attacks by tigers at zoos across India:
lJuly 2012: A 32-year-old man was mauled and seriously injured by a tiger after he sneaked into its enclosure at the Tata Steel Zoological Park in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand.
lAugust 2009: A drunk visitor to the Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad tried to feed grass to a white tiger, and ended up at the Osmania General Hospital with a severely mauled arm.
lDecember 2007: Two tigers at the Guwahati Zoo mauled a visitor who put his hand into the enclosure to get a close-up photograph. The man lost his left arm and died later.
lDecember 2000: A tiger killed a youth who ventured into the open-air enclosure by scaling the high wall surrounding it at the Alipore Zoo of Kolkata.
lJanuary 1996: Two drunk men tried to garland a tiger after entering the enclosure at the Alipore Zoo. The animal killed one of them and injured the other.
