Jeypore: T-86 a tiger was recently buried in a rather unusual and rather sensitive event such as cremation after dying at the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve. The event has elicited uproar on the social media, many people wondering about the process followed in burying the tiger. The process was monitored by officials of the District Administration and Police Department and recorded in a video that has since gone viral.
The focus has thus been on why the tiger was not buried. Even the critics have pointed out that authorities moved in religious discrimination between tigers where one can deduce that choice of cremating tiger instead of burying it was due to authorities’ culture. To answer these questions TV9 Bharatvarsh initiated a sting operation and contacted many tiger reserves in India.
History Of The Decision
Till 2004, the body of any dead tiger was dumped into a hole just dug at the site and no formalities were performed. This practise was completely overhauled after a widely reported event in the year 2004. In the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Alwar, Rajasthan, poachers succeded in mutilating body parts of tiger buried in the ground. These parts were seized from them as evidence that there was a weakness in the tiger protection plan.
After the incident, a new set of rules was introduced by the NTCA and according to these rules, cremation had to be done of all taged tigers in the country. It was to make it impossible to have any body part of it taken for such purposes in the black market.
One of the former CFO, Sunain Sharma, who was directly involved with Sariska, described the grisly event that led to the new policy change. “This was true after the Sariska poaching incident when it was realised that burying dead tigers exposed it to poachers. The NTCA then came up with measures to ensure that any part of a tiger was completely burned to ashes,” Sharma said.
Guidelines for Cremation
The NTCA’s guidelines are specific: The species demands that when a tiger dies, then the remains must be completely elliminshed. To this, a committee is constituted and is headed by members of the tiger reserve team, along with the district’s Collector office, the local police and a member of NTCA. The committee members have to stay until the ashes of the tiger’s are buried and there is no evidence that the tiger was ever there.
“The decision to cremate is fundamentally about preventing the trade in protected species.” Sharma added. “Tiger bones and body parts in particular have always remained a focus of poachers; cremation is the only option in the effort to exclude any attempts at claiming it back.” Since the introduction of the measures above the NTCA has been able to minimise the smuggling of tiger body parts in one way or the other.
Controversial Social Media Issues
The video which was made showing the cremation of T-86 has elicited various reactions on the social media. As to the burial, some have written that it would have been more natural, while others criticised that a tiger was cremated according to the ritualistic pattern, which, in their view, was not necessary. Nonethe less, the authorities have always defended cremation as an effective and essential process of preservation from a conservation perspective and not in any way linked to any religious or cultural representation.
According to Sunain Sharma, who advocated for the cremation approach, one thing is for sure, it does not allow for even one part of the tiger’s body to remain intact. In light of the historical practises in poaching, this precaution is quite important.”
This cremation procedure has been implemented since 2004 across all tiger reserves of India including Ranthambore to ensure these animals are rendered safe and honoured when given their last send off – unlike previous torture after death.
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