Dane Huckelbridge - No Beast So Fierce

Even more traumatic still, however, is the possibility that a man-eater might return—that such a tiger may have acquired a taste for its new prey and actually begin seeking humans out on a reoccurring basis. In these instances, attacks change from chance encounters in the forest to the deliberate stalking of villagers and even predation within their homes. Man-eating leopards are more famous in India and Nepal for dragging victims from their houses, but tigers have been known to do it as well. In addition to the previously mentioned tiger attacks, Hemanta Mishra also relates in his memoirs an attack that occurred in the Madi Valley of Nepal, by a man-eating tigress known as Jogi Pothi. Like the Champawat, this tigress had ceased being an elusive, nocturnal predator and began conducting raids on the edges of villages in broad daylight. And also like the Champawat, this tiger proved extremely difficult to find or catch, as it had a knack for concealing itself immediately after a kill in nearby ravines. The houses of the villagers tended to be simple mud, wood, and thatch structures, economical but not terribly sturdy, which meant that a tiger could break in and drag its victims from their homes. This was very nearly what occurred in the village of Bankatta in 1988. A local yogi—an ostensibly celibate holy man—happened to be furtively entertaining feminine company in the wee hours of the morning when he thought he heard a knock at the door. His “guest” made the mistake of answering said door, as described in the following account:

Upon hearing the knocking sound, the jogi’s lady friend peeked through a hole in the wooden door. Shocked to see a huge tiger, she shrieked “Bagh! Bagh!” (“Tiger! Tiger!”) in terror at the top of her lungs. Her jogi consort jumped out of his bed and joined her, banging pots and pans in the hut and yelling for help. Their cries rang across the forest to the village. Equipped with axes and khukuris, Nepalese machetes, villagers rushed toward the jogi’s hut, causing the tiger to flee into a nearby ravine.

The yogi’s reputation as a holy man may have been ruined, but both his own life and that of his guest were preserved, and the tiger was scared away before it could force its way into the house and complete the kill.

If the thought of a man-eating tiger bursting through wooden doors or mud walls to drag away a sleeping victim isn’t sobering enough, there are stories of Bengal tigers braving water and currents to carry off people from their boats. In the aforementioned Sundarbans, a region famous for its unusually aggressive tigers, the cats have been known to swim out and snatch people from their vessels. Despite the mangroves being officially off-limits, locals still do enter into the protected forests to cut firewood and poach animals, activities that put them at risk from a dense population of environmentally isolated tigers with a limited food supply. Inevitably, human–tiger conflict follows. That was precisely what happened in 2014, when a sixty-two-year-old man from the village of Lahiripur set off in a boat with his two children to catch crabs on a small river in the forests of Kholakhali. In this instance, the stalking tiger leapt from the bank of the river, over the water, and into the boat, where it immediately attacked the father. The man’s son remembered the tragic attack vividly, as reported by The Times of India :

Suddenly, my sister cried out: ‘Dada, bagh (tiger)’. I was stunned, and my body froze. All I saw [was] a flash of yellow. It took me a moment to register the gruesome sight before me. My father was completely buried under the beast. I could only see his legs thrashing about. I shook off my numbness and grabbed a stick. Molina, too, took out a long cutter we use to clear foliage in the jungle. Together, we poked and battered the tiger, but it refused to give up . . . It jumped off and landed on the bank in one giant leap. We saw it disappear into the jungle with my father still in its jaws.

Indeed, tigers do not share the common house cat’s fear of water, and at times, they can even incorporate it into an attack strategy. The renowned filmmaker and tiger expert Valmik Thapar took note of how one tiger he observed in India’s Ranthambore tiger reserve had mastered the technique of chasing sambar deer into a lake, where, once they were hampered by the water, it would drag them under and kill them beneath the surface. Something similar may have occurred on a human target in the Sundarbans in 1997, when a man named Jamal Mohumad narrowly escaped a watery death. This is his version of the attack, which occurred while he was fishing:

The tiger lunged at me with its paws. It dug its claws into my legs and dragged me under the water. I struggled under the water and dived down about 10 feet under the water. The tiger let go of me. I swam deep under water as fast as I could. After a while, when I reached the surface of the water, I couldn’t see the tiger. I swam down the river for a bit and saw a boat and cried out for help.

Jamal became something of a local legend in the Sundarbans, as he was perhaps the only person on earth who had survived three—yes, three —separate predatory attacks by tigers. Despite his harrowing encounters with the animals, he would continue to venture into the forest, driven by the same need for food, firewood, and animal fodder that would have compelled the Tharu people a century before. But in the case of the Champawat, this tiger was no longer content waiting for humans to come passing by. It had begun, by the first few years of the 1900s, to leave the protection of the forest and go out looking for them, undergoing as it did so the transformation from a killer of men, to an eater of men, to an active hunter of them. And in its quest for fresh kills, it would eventually travel away from the marshy grasslands and dense sal jungles of its birth, and begin wandering northward and ever upward, into the populated hills that lay beyond.

*For those interested in a more detailed examination of documentary evidence, there is an epilogue at the end of the book which lists the various colonial records, newspaper articles, and physical artifacts that specifically mention the Champawat and provide insight into its attacks.

†While generally lauded as a landmark event in tiger conservation, the creation of Chitwan National Park involved the forced displacement of dozens of indigenous Tharu families who had called the central forest home—a traumatic event that continues to haunt the Tharu communities that live today on the edge of Chitwan’s buffer zone. There has been some progress in terms of giving the Tharu access to the central forest for the traditional gathering of food, fodder, and building materials, although it is highly restricted, and continues to be a source of friction between the Tharu community and park officials.

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