A tiger that had strayed out of the forest in the Sunderbans and was caged near a village was released into the wild on Monday.

A mechanised boat carried the big cat to the edge of the Dhulibhasani forest around 12.30pm. It was low tide in a creek of the formidable Matla river, around 200m from the forest.

As the door of the cage was lifted, the forest guards onboard let out a collective cry. The tiger leapt off the boat into the shallow waters. Within seconds, it took rapid strides and disappeared into the forest, not looking back even once.

“Our men were shouting so that the tiger did not turn back,” said a forest official.

Pugmarks were spotted near Kishorimohanpur village in the Kultali block early on Sunday. The discovery prompted the forest department to launch a search involving over 70 people.

The tiger was finally trapped in a cage around 9.30pm on Sunday.

A team of vets examined the tiger after it was captured. “It was an adult male. There were no external injuries. It had healthy canine teeth and eyesight. The animal seemed healthy. It must have been over 140kg,” said Nisha Goswami, the divisional forest officer of the South 24-Parganas forest division.

Pugmarks were found near a small but dense patch of mangroves on the border of the same village on January 6. Foresters suspected the tiger had sneaked out of the Ajmalmari forest, across a creek from the village.

The mangrove patch was fenced with nylon nets and a search operation began. But the thick mangrove cover helped the tiger elude forest officials for two days.

On January 8, pugmarks on the other side of the creek, on the edge of the Ajmalmari forest, led forest officials to claim that the tiger had gone back to where it came from.

But fresh pugmarks on Sunday triggered panic among villagers again.

Asked if the same tiger came back, Goswami, the DFO, said: “We cannot say for sure. The pugmarks and the stripes have to be analysed in detail before we can say anything."

A section of foresters had earlier lent credence to the theory that the tiger strayed because it was old, ailing and looking for easy prey.

“The tiger is not on the wrong side of age. It could still have lost a territorial battle with a stronger male,” said a forest official.

The forest that the tiger was released in and the one it came from are wide apart, separated by three riverine creeks. “It was intentional. We don’t want it to come back to the same human habitat,” the official said.