KOLKATA, India (AP) — A Bengal tiger snatched a man off a fishing boat in eastern India, dragging him
away into a mangrove swamp as his children looked on in horror, the man’s son said Friday.
The attack happened Thursday as Sushil Manjhi and his son and daughter were crab fishing in a stream in
the Sunderbans National Park. The tiger leaped aboard the boat and clamped its jaws on Manjhi’s neck,
said Sushil’s son, Jyotish.
The tiger “quickly flung my father on his back and gave a giant leap before disappearing into the
forest,” Jyotish said by telephone from his village in Lahiriur in West Bengal state. He said he and his
sister tried to beat the animal with sticks and a knife, but the thrashing had no effect. His father was
dragged away and was presumed dead.
The attack underlines the difficult existence of millions of poor Indians who make a living by scavenging
in forests and rivers, often at risk from wild predators. Many villagers fish for crabs in the
Sunderbans — even though it’s illegal in the protected reserve — because they fetch a good price at
markets in nearby towns.
The national park is one of the largest reserves for the royal Bengal tiger. Thursday’s attack was the
fourth deadly assault by a tiger this year in the Sundarbans, wildlife officials said.
India has more than half of the 3,200 tigers believed to be left in the wild in the world. But as the
country undergoes breakneck development to accommodate the growth of its 1.2 billion people, tiger
habitats have been shrinking.
The big cat’s numbers have also dwindled because of rampant poaching to feed a flourishing market for
tiger organs and bones in China.