Five men from a tribal community in Madhya Pradesh, were made to squat on the ground, as forest officials stood around them: the prime accused and his friends who had been arrested for tiger poaching (he allegedly poisoned the tiger that had preyed on his livestock). They were also made to hold up placards with their names boldly printed on them, for the cameras. This time they weren’t shackled with chains as is often norm. This was a trophy for the forest department: tribal tiger poachers nabbed.
The carcass of the tigress, radio-collared, buried in a pit near the Satpura Tiger Reserve (STR) in Madhya Pradesh, was unearthed by forest officials on March 27 this year. The tigress had died nearly a month earlier.
Now it comes to light that in 2025, Madhya Pradesh, a State with the country’s largest tiger population, recorded 55 tiger deaths, the highest number since Project Tiger was launched in 1973. Of these, 15 were “unnatural deaths” — those caused by human intervention, such as poaching, poisoning, electrocution, or road and rail accidents — accounting for a significant 27% of the total deaths.
‘Serious questions’
The strange story behind the death of this particular tigress has been the discourse among several conservations across the country lately. Ajay Dubey, an environment activist doesn’t buy the argument that it was retaliatory killing by forest dwellers for livestock loss, but that it was the opium syndicate (the carcass was found near an opium field).
In a PIL he filed before the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Mr. Dubey said that the deaths in the State’s tiger reserves are “shocking… and shows that these incidents have happened because of the negligence on the part of officers concerned.” Tigers are dying “under mysterious and often suspicious circumstances, raising serious questions about protection, enforcement, and accountability,” the PIL stated.
It pointed out that post-mortems were conducted without videography, forensic investigations were left incomplete, and deaths were routinely classified as being the result of territorial fights without thorough examination.
The State responded to the PIL: in an affidavit before the High Court, it conceded to statutory limitations that come in the way of forest officers investigating organised wildlife crime, especially when digital coordination and transnational networks are involved.
Forest dwellers as ‘inferior’
Meanwhile, Chief Wildlife Warden Subharanjan Sen told the media, “Every tiger death is treated as a case of poaching unless there is clear evidence to the contrary.” In cases of poaching, whether intentional or accidental, “we leave no stone unturned to ensure punishment for the culprits,” he added.
But, said Gargi Sharma, a doctoral candidate at the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, “In my personal opinion, treating all tiger deaths as poaching is worrisome. Under the Wildlife Protection Act, the burden of proof falls on the accused. I question if this is a way of procedurally harassing people and creating an environment of fear amongst the communities.” She told The Hindu that the dominant discourse in conservation “likens poaching to a war on biodiversity.”
This particular instance in Madhya Pradesh symbolises the national colonial legacy of “fortress conservation, where tribals and their activities are painted as savage, uncouth and causing destruction of the environment, while the activities of the affluent were portrayed as scientific,” Ms. Sharma added.
‘Colonial mindset’
This broad brushstroke also strips poaching from its social reality: it stops us from answering why people partake in poaching, she explained. “Culturally India has a rich history of ritualistic hunting, especially in animistic societies. And as for poaching, it brings a source of money to impoverished tribal people who live on the margins and have lost their sovereignty. Their marginalisation is what the government should be fighting against.”
Nitin Rai, an independent researcher told The Hindu that the forest department’s perspective is illogical and inhumane and is typical of a “colonial and racialised mindset.” He added: “The narrative that tigers, like diamonds, are ‘forever’ has burnished itself into the minds of elite society. The criminalisation of a large section of society merely because they live in forests or are poor is reflective of a deep rot in the state’s conservation regime.”
During colonial times they were used as labour in timber plantations, said Dr. Rai. More recently under the conservation regime, which has no need for their labour, forest dwellers have become dispensable and their presence in forests seen as unwanted, he added. “The caste-based nature of Indian society continues to play a role in perceiving forest dwellers as inferior and thus a problem to be dealt with by any and all force.”
People-centric conservation
Ms. Sharma called for a “people-centric model of conservation” where local communities decide the fate of their forests and having an active say in its management. “First, all rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) must be settled. Second, the constitution of the forest force locally should have reservation for local people to be permanent employees,” she said.
Under the FRA, the centre piece for a reimagining of forest and conservation governance in India, gram sabhas are empowered to take over control of their forests, said Dr. Rai “and define both ecological benchmarks and the governance structures for the management of forests.”
It is not merely the economic loss when a tiger kills livestock but the lack of agency of local people who are unable to deal with tiger presence in the area due to being alienated from their forests, said Dr. Rai. “There is a break in a relationship with the forest and its management that now manifests itself in a variety of ways including poisoning and other strategies to hit back at the state that is causing this alienation,” he said.
divya.gandhi@thehindu.co.in
Published – April 05, 2026 07:45 am IST
