NEW DELHI – A white tiger killed a 20-year-old young man after he climbed over a fence at the New Delhi zoo and jumped into tiger’s enclosure on Tuesday, a spokesman said.
Visitors, who witnessed the tragedy, said Maqsood Khan fell into the moat in the white tiger’s enclosure while he was reportedly trying to take pictures. After about 15 minutes of the tiger watching the man pleading for his life, the video shows the animal striking Maqsood after visitors, who were attempting a rescue, started hollering and throwing stones at it.
Authorities eventually frightened the tiger into a small cage inside the enclosure. The man, whose body remained in the outdoor enclosure two hours after the attack, was dead by the time help reached him, Khan said.
[box type=”note” align=”aligncenter” ]“The tiger was just being a tiger,” said Belinda Wright, who has spent years working to protect India’s dwindling numbers of wild tigers. “An unusual object fell into his domain. … He’s a wild animal in captivity. It is certainly not the tiger’s fault.”[/box]
It’s not unusual for visitors to a zoo in India to taunt animals or toss bits of food through cages even though zoo rules forbid it. Groups of visitors may sometimes throw used plastic water bottles or stones into animal enclosures to get the animal to react.
Deputy Commissioner of Police M.S. Randhawa identified the man only as Maqsood and said he was thought to be about 20 years old.
The zoo remained open Tuesday afternoon, though authorities eventually roped off the tiger enclosure.
What happens in the video showing the tiger kill the man?
The majestic 215-kg tiger, named Vijay, initially appeared surprised on seeing the sudden human intrusion into its habitat. “As soon as the youth fell into the moat, the tiger approached him and silently watched him for nearly 15 minutes,” Bittoo, an eyewitness, who recorded the entire incident on his mobile, said.
The video footage then shows the six-foot, seven-year-old tiger mauling and later dragging Maqsood around by the neck before settling in a grassy corner of the enclosure with a lifeless body.
The white tiger had never been in the wild, which, the zoo officials said, was the reason why the animal’s first reaction was not to kill, but to “curiously inspect”.
Eyewitnesses and zoo officials said Maqsood, a resident of Anand Parbat in central Delhi, had “crossed the stand-off barrier” of the white tiger’s enclosure and then fell or jumped into the moat which separated the enclosure from the visitors’ gallery.
Source: The Canadian Press