Farmer found dead in Beed's Ashti forest, tiger that walked from Yavatmal suspected

A farmer died in a forest in Ashti taluka of Beed district on Saturday. A tiger is suspected of killing him. It is said to be the same tiger that walked about 450 to 500 km from Yavatmal in Vidarbha to Solapur in Marathwada in December 2024. Named Ramling, it had not been caught in nearly two years.

The deceased is Devidas Takle, a farmer from Ashti taluka. According to Forest Department officials, he had gone into the forest to get fodder for his cattle but did not return home. His son then set out to look for him.

The son reached the forest on a motorcycle and called out to his father, but there was no reply. He then got off the motorcycle and went deeper into the forest. There he found his father's sickle on the ground and bloodstains nearby.

The son informed villagers, who joined the search. Following the bloodstains, they found the farmer's body inside the forest. The injuries on the body pointed to a tiger attack. The Forest Department has given the family Rs 10 lakh as initial assistance. The remaining formalities are under way.

Seeing the injuries, local residents demanded that the tiger be captured, and they are firm on the demand. The Forest Department, meanwhile, is trying to persuade villagers that this may not have been a deliberate attack but an unfortunate encounter between a human and a wild animal.

A Forest Department source said the tiger should not be blamed for the incident, as the deceased had gone into the forest at his own risk. The source also said the tiger did not eat any part of the body. Had it wanted to attack humans, it would have done so in the past two years while moving through densely populated areas, the source said.

Amol Mundhe, Range Forest Officer (RFO) of Ashti range, has been tracking the tiger's movements. He said, "We have been keeping track of this tiger for the past two years. The animal, which came to our district from Yavatmal, is extremely shy and avoids going near humans or settlements. It is truly sad that a man has lost his life. But the initial inquiry suggests this may have been a sudden encounter, and the tiger is unlikely to have attacked the man with the intention of feeding. When we reached the spot, no part of the deceased's body had been eaten."

According to officials, the tiger is healthy and has been preying on horses and cattle that stray into the forest. They claim there is no earlier record of it lunging at or attacking humans during its roughly two years in the area.

Ramling was born in 2022 to tigress T22 in the Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yavatmal, south-west of Nagpur. Two years later it walked about 500 km to Solapur district in south-east Maharashtra, where some farmers had told Forest Department officials about increasing attacks on cattle.

Following these complaints, the department installed camera traps, which confirmed the tiger's presence. It was the first time a tiger had been recorded in the Yedshi Ramling Wildlife Sanctuary in Dharashiv district of Marathwada. Ramling was also photographed on 2 November this year by a camera trap set up by the Forest Department in Beed.