UMARIA: A young tiger was found dead in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) in Madhya Pradesh’s Umaria district, with officials suspecting it was killed by an adult tiger.

This is the second death of a feline in BTR within a week.

The carcass of the sub-adult tiger, aged between 12 months and 18 months, was spotted in a trench in Dhamokhar range of the BTR on Tuesday, forest ranger Vijay Shankar Shrivastava said on Wednesday.

The carcass was about 36 hours old and it is suspected that the big cat died in a fight with an adult tiger, he said. The pugmark of a second tiger was found in the vicinity, he said.

Marks of the carcass being dragged by another tiger were also found, he said.

The forest official said that the neck bone of the carcass was found to be broken and teeth marks were also found there, suggesting that the big cat died in the fight with another tiger.

The carcass was disposed of as per guidelines of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) after an autopsy, and its body samples were sent to a laboratory for examination, he said.

On January 9, the carcass of a young tiger, aged between 15 months and 18 months, was found lying in a trench in the Pator range of BTR.

Madhya Pradesh retained the “tiger state” status in the recent census (2022), with the number of big cats in the state rising to 785 from 526 in 2018.

As per the report ‘Status of Tigers: Co-predators & Prey in India-2022’, released by the NTCA and Wildlife Institute of India in July last year, Madhya Pradesh (785) has the highest number of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563) and Uttarakhand (560).