Tiger surfaces in habitat after 20 yrs — to be killed by a train

But the Mumbai-Delhi Rajdhani Express dealt a blow to that early this morning when it dashed through this area even as the tiger was crossing the tracks.

‘‘It is one of the saddest days of my life,’’ said Deputy Conservator of Forest Ladu Singh. ‘‘We were so excited by its arrival. I was hoping to see it in action. Instead, we found it dead on the tracks.’’

Forest guard Ahmad Khan was one of the few people who actually spotted the 149-kg tiger. While he is a man of few words, everyone else in the forest department couldn’t stop talking about the tiger, its pugmarks and the huge buffalo it had killed.

It was in 1982 that a tiger had been last seen in this ‘‘excellent tiger habitat’’. The miners took over soon after that and the tiger was driven out. In 1997, the Supreme Court banned mining inside sanctuaries, giving the tiger a second chance.

The forest department wants to carve out a new national park from the Darrah, Jawahar Sagar and National Chambal gharial sanctuaries. In a detailed proposal submitted to the state government, the forest department talks about creating an alternate tiger park, to give the ‘‘over-exposed and pampered’’ Ranthambore some competition.

An area of 323.6 sq km, spread across three existing sanctuaries, is proposed to be included in the National Park, which will mean stricter laws and an absolute no-no for grazing.

At present, the sanctuaries are run over by cattle, which a handful of forest guards, with one jeep between them, are not able to stop. ‘‘We try but it is quite difficult,’’ admits Singh. ‘‘This time we got some boundary walls constructed under the drought relief work but it is not enough.’’

Though villagers of Borabas, the last village on the edge of the sanctuaries, have resolved not to carry the axe into the jungle, they fully exploit their right to graze animals inside the sanctuaries.

Leading the campaign for creating a National Park is forest minister Bina Kak. ‘‘The area we have marked affects the least number of people and very few will have to be relocated,’’ she says. ‘‘I don’t see any problem in the entire proposal.’’

But a lot of environmentalists do. Members of the Hadoti Naturalist Society are sceptical about the plan being accepted. ‘‘It’s an excellent proposal but there has to be political will to push it through,’’ says a society member, R S Tomar. ‘‘The area is dominated by Gujjars who have political patronage and it is going to be tough to remove them from there.’’