A trail of pugmarks, later identified by foresters as that of a tiger, triggered panic at a village in the Sunderbans on Wednesday morning.

The marks were found on the fringes of Purba Debipur village in Kultali block. A tiger had strayed into another village in the block in October. A narrow river called Moni separates the village from the Ajmalmari forests. The pugmarks were found inside a small mangrove cover on the riverbank.

“The marks seem to be of a young tigress. They suggest she has gone back into the forest she came from,” said Milan Mandal, the divisional forest officer of South 24-Parganas.