The headless carcass of a tiger was found in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) in Madhya Pradesh's Umaria district, an official said on Sunday.
A patrolling team spotted the dead tiger in Patehra beat at 9pm on Friday and secured the area since it was too dark to conduct a search in the vicinity at the time, he said.
The head of the carcass was missing and a canine conducted a search of the area on Saturday, a BTR release informed.
"The carcass was found in a nullah (drain) and it was covered with sand. The inspection of the area suggested the carcass was 4-5 days old and had flowed here from another place. All its body parts are intact," the release said.
Following autopsy, the carcass was disposed of as per National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) guidelines, while the viscera will be sent to a laboratory for examination, the release said.
In the recent census, the number of tigers in Madhya Pradesh rose to 785 in 2022 from 526 in 2018.
As per the 'Status of Tigers: Co-predators & Prey in India-2022' report released in July this year by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and Wildlife Institute of India, the state has the highest number of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563) and Uttarakhand (560).
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