This came close on the heels of another pachyderm being killed in Kaziranga National Park this week taking the toll to eight this year, Forest Department officials said.

The carcass of the adolescent rhino was found today by forest guards in Bhuyapara forest range of the park with its horn taken away, the officials said.

The rhino was suspected to have been killed either last night or early today, they said.

The cameras fixed on the trees of the park to photograph tigers under the Project Tiger there had clicked the image of a person with a gun who is suspected to be the poacher who killed the pride of Assam.

The "last one-horned rhino" was killed by poachers at Manas in lower Assam along Bhutan three years ago, the officials said.

Manas was declared by the UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1985 but later put on the list of 'World Heritage Site in Danger' in 1992 following reports of poaching that killed all its rhino population and militant activities in the park.

MNP, however, was removed from the World Heritage Site in Danger status in 2011 after translocation of one-horned rhinos to the park from Kaziranga National Park and its preservation efforts to have 30 rhinos as part of Assam government's Indian Rhino Vision (IRV) 2020 project targeting to have 3,000 one-horned rhinos in the state by 2020.

On May 1 poachers had killed an adult male rhino and took away its horn in Kaziranga Pational Park.