A Royal Bengal Tiger was found dead near the Dolong tea estate in Falakata, north Bengal. It is still not certain how the tiger died. The population of the tigers here is diminishing by the day.

Forest department authorities maintain the tiger died from being hit by a train. On the other hand, railway officials say the nature of injuries on the tiger’s body rules out the possibility of death from a collision. This region has seen a series of animal deaths in recent times, when elephants and bisons have been knocked down by speeding trains. The state forest minister has ordered an exhaustive probe in to the cause of the tiger’s death.

Tea garden labourers first stumbled on the dead tiger on their way to work near a place called Dolong around eight o’clock on Monday morning. Rail authorities were informed, who in turn intimated the forest officials. They arrived three hours later at the site and took away the carcass for autopsy.

The carcass lay at a spot 15 metres from the railway tracks by the side of the Dolong bridge in Borosholmari village under Mathabhanga Block 11. The left side of the head was smashed. Later, a postmortem revealed that four rib bones were also broken. The tiger was nearly ten years old and was eight and half feet long.

Railway officials are not ruling out foul play. “The idea that the death was caused from a collision with a train is ridiculous. The body was found quite far from the tracks. Further, the nature of injuries indicate that a collision could not have caused the death. A collision with the train would have resulted in a mutilated body unlike here,” said Arjun Rakshit, DRM, Alipurduar. Railway authorities have also said that no train driver had reported any collision with an animal.