A tiger without a radio collar seems to have entered Bengal within a fortnight of tigress Zeenat getting captured and sent back to Similipal Tiger Reserve in Odisha.

Many foresters said they suspected the tiger had reached Jhargram.

"Pugmarks and scat suggest that the tiger is in Bengal," said Debal Roy, head of the forest force, but underlined that its exact location was unknown as unlike Zeenat it didn't have a radio collar on.

A senior forester in Jhargram said that while tracking pugmarks, they noticed an interesting detail — it has been following the same forest trail that Zeenat did.

"We are sure that a full-grown tiger has come here, and there is reason to believe that it is searching for tigress Zeenat, as it is travelling through the areas where she had roamed," said a senior forest official.

Another senior forester said that tigers can identify their partners or potential partners from a distance of nearly 100km by the unique aroma each tigress produces. The tiger can follow the path a tigress has taken.

Zeenat, a three-year-old tigress that fled Odisha's Similipal Tiger Reserve on December 5 last year, reached Jhargram's Belpahari forest on December 20 after travelling through the forests of Odisha and Jharkhand. On December 29, after extensive efforts, the Bengal forest department successfully tranquillised her in a forest in Bankura and sent her back to the STR. Zeenat had been relocated to Similipal from the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra on November 14, 2024.

"As the tiger has been following Zeenat's itinerary in the forest, trap cameras will be useful to track it as it doesn't have a radio collar," said the forester.

The forest department has so far installed around 60 trap cameras in various locations in Belpahari forests, including nearby water bodies.

Foresters are installing additional cameras. Trap cameras have been installed near villages like Muniardihi, Bagdoba and Chitamati under the Banshpahari gram panchayat in Belpahari.

An official said so far they couldn't confirm where the tiger came from.