An Indian fisherman says a tiger has snatched his father off a fishing boat and dragged him away into a mangrove swamp.
Jyotish Majhi says he was fishing for crabs with his father and sister Thursday when the tiger leaped onto their boat.
He says he and his sister beat the tiger with sticks, but their 60-year-old father was still thrashing in the animal’s jaws when they disappeared into the swamp.
The national park is one of the largest reserves for the royal Bengal tiger. Thursday’s attack was the fourth deadly assault by a tiger this year in the Sunderbans, according to wildlife officials.
India has more than half of the 3,200 tigers believed to be left in the wild in the world. But as the country undergoes breakneck development to accommodate the growth of its 1.2 billion people, tiger habitats have been shrinking.
The big cat’s numbers have also dwindled because of rampant poaching to feed a flourishing market for tiger organs and bones in China.
Agencies/Canadajournal