DINDIGUL: A week after a tiger was found poisoned to death in the Kodaikanal hills, forest officials stumbled upon the culprits during a raid on Thursday. The tiger killers, according to them, were none but the owner of a horse that was killed by the big cat and four cattle rearers of Pazhampudur village.
Even as Venkatesh, Divisional Forest Officer, Kodaikanal, had formed three teams to nab the offenders, a team led by Vijayakumar, Assistant Conservator of Forests, and Ranger Ganesh Ram conducted a surprise raid on a garden near Pazhampudur.
As they spotted five persons involved in a serious discussion, they tried to flee from the place in a huff. But the foresters rounded up four of them — Viswanathan (66), owner of the horse attacked by the tiger, Vijayarajan (45), Poomari (33) and Muthukrishnan (34), while Anbu (45) managed to escape into the woods.
When the ACF grilled them, the quartet confessed to have killed the 15-year-old male tiger by poisoning the carcass of the horse with nematicide (kurunai) which the big cat consumed and died in a while last week. They told the forest officials that they decided to kill the tiger out of fear that it would target their cattle too.
