Despite the herculean efforts of the forest officials to rescue the Royal Bengal Tiger spotted at Melkheria in Lalgarh forest three days ago, the big cat was still out of reach on Monday.

Though, fresh pugmarks of the carnivore were found at different places in Dherua and Salboni area, about 15 kilometres from Lalgarh, which left widespread panic among local residents, the experts and forest officials are found on toes~how they would conduct the operation to trap the big cat.

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The situation has made things more critical for the forest officials as a herd of elephants have strayed into the Lalgarh forest and destroyed two camera traps and one of the two cages installed to trap the tiger.

The local residents, however, blame the forest officials for the delay in initiating the operation.

“The forest officials could not identify the bovine injury marks two to three weeks ago, which were clearly not by hyena or Indian wolves as claimed by them earlier.

Even after spotting the tiger in the trap cameras, they installed only two cages with live baits. But our forest area is so large that mere two cages are not enough to trap the tiger,”, a local resident alleged.

“There should be more teams at different locations and more cages placed. There are hundreds of wild boars and in some pockets spotted deer (Goaltore).

So, the tiger can roam elsewhere in search of food and hide in suitable places during the daytime. The forest officials should initiate combing operation to trap the tiger soon,” Sukhen Hansda, a local resident of Dherua said.

“First it was the problem of elephants destroying our crops, now a tiger roams about freely in our villages and kills our cattle.

“Since Saturday night, another course of harassment has appeared before us because elephants have revisited our area again,” Manju Mandi, a local resident of Jhitka forest area said.

A senior forest official said, “Due to the appearance of elephants, the tiger will not stay in the area where it was sighted. It will stay away and not go to nearby forest area where it can roam freely. This has made the things more critical for us to catch the tiger in the cage”.

“We have already alerted the villagers not to venture into the forest and we have also warned the Bankura forest officials to be alert about the thing because the tiger may take shelter in their forest area,” the forest official said.

On Monday morning, the forest department dispatched employees to Dherua, about 15 km from Lalgarh, where Sushil Mahato, a villager, said the tiger attacked a cow in his house. “Our people will try to determine the nature of the predator from thee pugmarks,” said Rabindranath Saha, divisional forest officer (Midnapore division).