The animal corridors leading to the Karbi Anglong hills — where Kaziranga’s animals would take refuge during the monsoon each year — are now blocked by quarries and hotels
Hamida Khatun, 42, has never visited Kaziranga National Park (KNP), although it is some 900 metres behind her house in Harmoti, Assam. Her populous village adjoins the Bagori range of the wildlife preserve, best known as the address of the greater one-horned rhino.
On the evening of July 18, Khatun froze when she found a tiger by her home. So did the tiger. The tiger was some 10 ft away from Khatun, between her and a tube-well in the backyard to which she was headed to wash her plates. She clanged the steel plates to chase the animal away, and the tiger disappeared into the bushes.
The people of Harmoti are used to the odd deer taking refuge in their village during the annual floods in Kaziranga. But a tiger has never crossed their path in more than four decades. Nor has a rhino or elephant.
What happened after Khatun’s encounter was also unprecedented: angry villagers almost lynched Bagori Range Officer Pankaj Bora and other forest officials who had been trying to guide the animal back to the forest.
They were angry that the foresters had let the tiger lie all day inside scrap dealer Rafiqul Islam’s house. “They should have tranquillised the animal and taken it away instead of endangering our lives,” says Khatun’s 24-year-old son Hafizuddin Sheikh.
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