On May 19, 2012 after an hour of rumbling through the 110-degree Fahrenheit heat in Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, India, my jeep pulled up to a water body called Magar Deh. Like a deity in the water sat a young male Tiger whose eyes emanated an intensity I had never felt before. His orange coat contrasting over the blue water made for a surreal sight.
It turns out this was T24 (popularly called ‘Ustad’), the newly dominant male Tiger of the area. Scouting was over - I was compelled to make T24 the subject of my documentary, which would now obviously focus on dominant male Tiger behavior. But three years later, on May 8, 2015, T24 killed a man who entered his territory and my documentary became about something more, something bigger.
The state government deemed T24 dangerous for killing forest guard Rampal Saini and transferred him to a zoo, galvanizing massive social uproar. Activists took their cause to the streets and online, organizing various protests, social media groups, and even erecting massive billboards demanding for the return of T24 to the wild. Two activists, Chandrabhal Singh and Ajay Dubey, have applied an in-depth legal approach to release T24. Both have taken their cases all the way to the High Court and Supreme Court of India but have lost thus far. Singh persists with a review of his original petition and will be back in the Jaipur High Court on July 8, 2016.
News specials online and on television introduced T24 with exaggerated roars, hyped up music and sound effects. They ranged from being sympathetic towards T24 to supportive of his removal from Ranthambhore. In one NDTV special, Tiger expert Valmik Thapar called T24 a man-eater. Often the news stories displayed images of the wrong Tiger, revealing a general sloppiness, or a perception that the sensation around the animal was transient and did not warrant accurate reporting.
When I look closely at my footage of T24 in the wild I find that much of it seems to relate to the legal and social sensation he has become. Here is one example from May 7, 2014:
It was a hot Wednesday morning and I located T24 in Zone 1 as he lazed around in the night-cooled jungle soil under a canopy of Dhok Trees. I thought it was going to be another one of those days where all I would do was watch him sleep as my gear and crew overheated. A great day if you are a tourist on a short trip wanting to see a Tiger in the wild, but not a great day for a filmmaker who has been following T24 for years capturing most every angle of him asleep.
But T24 kept looking up at something, on and off for about 30 minutes. Suddenly the trees shook above and T24 blasted forward. He settled in a new position with even more focus upward, to reveal a nervous leopard high up in a tree. The leopard had been kept in elevated hostage, perhaps overnight, in response to the invasion into T24’s territory. Leopard invasion into Tiger territory could mean a reduction in Tiger prey and danger for a Tiger’s cubs.
The two big cats endured in a battle of intensive patience for over an hour after which T24 gave up, and retreated deeper into the jungle. The leopard cautiously made his way down revealing a bleeding hind-leg; a sign of what may have happened overnight. Moments after the leopard touched ground T24 charged in from wherever he was tactfully hiding. I remember seeing a blur of furious orange as I desperately struggled to get the shot on camera.
The leopard escaped to a new tree right on the edge of Ranthambhore Park by the road from which tourist jeeps enter and where hundreds of pilgrims travel on foot to the temples on Wednesdays. T24 was at the base of the tree hoping to shake down this leopard. Jeeps gathered around the scene filled with now maniacal tourists and their guides chaotically populating the road which was already busy with pilgrims engaged in the spectacle, and forest guards trying to manage this dangerous situation.
T24 was distracted by the commotion around him as he tried to maintain focus on the invasive leopard. The specificity of T24’s torment is important here. The leopard invaded his territory and so he only tormented the leopard. Should not the mass of people on foot, and in the jeeps surrounding, all within 30 feet, be easier attacks for a 'man-eater' or a wanton killer? Depends on your definition of a 'man-eater' which would have to be addressed in another article. Wanton he was not because T24 chose to stick with the leopard who had entered his territory.
Saini had entered T24’s territory when he was killed so was he killed because T24 was a 'man-eater' or because T24 was a zealous defender of his territory, or both? The state government argues that T24 was going beyond defending territory: He was making kills because he went for the lethal bite to the neck rather than the usual reaction where a Tiger either flees, hides, growls, or attacks with a warning scratch upon encountering a human in Tiger territory. The government also points out that Saini had a right to enter the core area as part of his duty as a forest guard. Furthermore, Saini was T24’s fourth human kill, and he would have likely consumed the body if it was not taken away, according to Field Director Y.K. Sahu.
Activist Chandrabhal Singh responds by pointing out that Saini did not follow National Tiger Conservation Authority protocol in his patrolling methods by walking in unarmed and alone, and that all four attacks associated with T24 resulted from human invasion into the Tiger’s sacred core territory, not the other way around. Singh also thinks it is important to remember that Tiger's are apex predators so any expectation from them to defend their territory in a manner safe for human invaders is against the animal's natural instincts.
As I enter post-production I do not want my documentary to make a case for or against T24's removal from the wild; that would be too presumptuous. I am interviewing both sides to be as thorough as possible and to allow for the best discussion on Tiger conservation which is ultimately more important. I do, however, want to use my footage of T24 to give audiences an accurate glimpse of who he was before the masses were fixated on the ‘man-eater’ scandal around him. I spent a lot of time with T24, I owe him that much.
