CHANDIGARH: He prefers to be addressed as NawabShafat Ali Khan of Hyderabad. He carries a modern-day cannon: a powerful, bolt-action .458 Magnum by American riflemakers Winchester. This weapon can stop a charging tiger dead in its track at 100m. Tigers and leopards accused of hunting humans for a living are put down by Khan on the request of state governments. The Nawab on Sunday shot dead a huge leopard, 7 feet 2 inches from tail to nose, in Thunag village of Mandi district (Himachal Pradesh), which was said to have killed three humans.
However, such methods to put down endangered tigers and leopards attract criticism from conservationists. What is at dispute here is: was it the correct leopard that was shot? Was the leopard a chronic man-eater? Did the leopard kill a human accidentally in an unavoidable situation. In 1988, a leopard killed the son of one Parmanand of village Chaila near Morni town near Panchkula. It created much terror and sensation. Villagers demanded the leopard be shot. The Haryana forests and wildlife department requisitioned the services of K Sher Jung, a shikari, from Ganguwala near Paonta Sahib. Jung tracked down the leopard and shot it at night using a searchlight near Sherla village.
"One possibility is that the leopard Jung shot was the creature that killed the boy because attacks never occurred again. However, the other possibility is that the leopard chanced upon the boy and attacked him out of fear, and this would imply it was not a habitual killer of humans. I recollect the family moved the high court for enhanced compensation as the Rs 20,000 awarded by the state was not seen as adequate. The HC then awarded Rs 1 lakh more to Parmanand's family,'' said Sadanand, a veteran officer of the wildlife department.
As far as man-eating leopards go, it is the Panar leopard of Almora shot by Jim Corbett in 1910 that claimed the maximum human lives: more than 400. This was followed by the Rudraprayag leopard shot by Corbett in 1926, which claimed 125 lives. The Champawat tigress claimed 436 lives before Corbett put her down in 1911. Khan embraced much controversy in 2009 when he shot a man-eating tigress near Faizabad in UP. He was accused of flaunting his rifles, posing on elephants with his family, boasted that shooting the tigress was much fun, and even quietly shot a spotted deer in the larger pursuit of hunting the tigress. That tiger hunt was also sanctioned by the UP government.
Renowned wildlife biologist Vidya Athreya is emphatic. "The only question I have is that how did he (Khan) know it was this animal (that killed humans)? The thing is there is no way you can prove it is the particular animal. It could be, it could not be. Pugmarks are not accurate to differentiate between individuals. Many animals could use the same path/same spot at night. However, having said that, it is also important that the forest department does something after a human attack because people are scared (and rightfully so). However, the only issue I have and it is a question that would be nice to have an answer to: if killing 'man-eaters' works, then why have human killings not stopped in Uttarakhand where so many leopards are killed as 'man-eaters'. Is our killing animals (due to poaching) actually creating man-eaters? Uttarakhand and Himachal have high rates of leopard poaching -- probably because they are near Nepal. Is anyone thinking that our poaching them could be worsening the problem for humans?'' Athreya told TOI.
