Fugitive tigress Zeenat gives trackers the slip, turns up in Purulia's Banduan

Fugitive tigress Zeenat last night travelled 39 km along the dense jungle corridor overnight, with tracking experts completely in the dark, and turned up in the Banduan forests in Purulia this morning, as the search operations by forest officials aiming to tranquilise the big cat intensified.

- KANCHAN SIDDIQUI

"We've already located the tigress, and two buffalo calves have been placed as bait and camouflaged cages with trap doors have been set up to capture it," Dr Singaram Kulandaivel, Chief Conservator of Forests (Central), told The Statesman on Sunday afternoon.

Zeenat, after tranquillisation, will be brought back to the Simlipal Tiger Reserve which the wandering tigress had left around 14 days ago.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), however, imposes restrictions on the tranquillisation of wandering tigers in forests.

"It allows tranquillisation only when the big cats attack human settlements or livestock," an official said.

Zeenat, a three-year-old tigress, was airlifted from Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra along with another named Yamuna on 14 November with the aim to scale up the gene pool of the big cats in Odisha's Simlipal Tiger Reserve.

Zeenat, however, deserted its new habitat on the late evening of 8 December and was traced about 150 km away in the Chakulia forests of Jharkhand, bordering Bengal, on 11 December.