It was only last week that Chittaranjan Sarkar, 45, had gone fishing for crabs in the core area of Sundarban tiger reserve. Suddenly a tiger leapt on him and carried him away before his friends could raise the alarm. The incident happened last Tuesday in the Basirhat forest range. Sarkar was a resident of Lahirpur village in Gosaba block.
The rate of tiger attacks has risen manifolds in West Bengal. The loss of tiger habitat is attributed as the main reason for the renewed man-animal conflict in the Sundarban regions of the state.
In the past fortnight, more than five people have lost their lives in tiger attacks. Last Monday, in the Benifili forest area, Sankar Sardar, a fisherman, was injured in a tiger attack. He, however, later succumbed to his injuries in a Kolkata hospital. Another fisherman, Arabinda Biswas, who had gone to catch crabs with two of his associates in the Jhila forest area, lost his life last Sunday. Sardar was a resident of Kumirmari area of Sundarbans.
The list of dead is, in fact, enormous, according to Kanti Ganguly, former Sundarban development minister, government of West Bengal, and a veteran politician of the marshy region. He claimed that some 43 crab catchers had fallen prey to tiger attacks in the last seven months in Sundarbans.
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