Pashuri, the tigress, dies

Tigress Pashuri died on Wednesday. The photo was taken on February 8 at Gazipur Safari Park. Photo: File

The Bengal tigress wounded in a hunter's trap in the Sundarbans died on Wednesday.
Forest officials rescued her from a village beside the forest in Khulna on February 7 and brought it to Bangabandhu Safari Park in Gazipur the next day.
On February 9, veterinary surgeons conducted a five-hour long surgery to save her forelimb as a vein had been torn and the wound had become infected.   
The tigress, which acquired a new name, Pashuri, after it was brought to the park, had stopped eating since February 15, said the officials.
Pashuri died on Wednesday and it was buried at the park on Thursday.
"We tried our level best to keep her alive. But further infection occurred after the surgery," said Dr Tapan Kumar Dey, forest conservator at wildlife and nature conservation circle under the Department of Forest.
"She became more ferocious and was not ready to take treatment anymore. She stopped eating and died," he told The Daily Star yesterday.
Pashuri bit off the stitches in her wound as there might have been irritation, he added.
Dr Mizanur Rahman, the veterinary surgeon, came to the park for a second time but he did not tranquilise Pashuri for a surgery as she became very weak, said Tapan Kumar Dey.
Before burying her, Pashuri was skinned and its organs were sent to the central lab for preparing the viscera report, Tapan said.
Pashuri was first noticed by a tourist on January 27 in Lawdope village of Chandpai range in the Sundarbans.
The tourist snapped a picture of the tigress limping away beside the Dangmari creek, and the photo was published in The Daily Star on January 31.
Since then the forest department had been trying to catch her. They fashioned a wooden cage 12 feet long and three and a half feet wide.
Using a goat as bait, the officials managed to cage her on February 7.