A crab hunter from Gosaba in South 24-Parganas suffered multiple injuries when a royal Bengal tiger attacked him in the Pirtala jungle of the Sunderbans late on Sunday evening.
Ashis Das, along with two of his companions, was checking a trap laid in a creek.
The tiger mauled Ashis, a resident of Bijoynagar-Bali village of Gosaba, and tried to drag him inside the jungle. His two companions fought hard with it and managed to save his life.
Ashis was rushed to Gosaba block hospital late on Sunday. His condition deteriorated following continuous bleeding from multiple injuries, which included one in the head, he was shifted to Chittaranjan National Medical College Hospital in Calcutta.

“It was an uneven battle for us with the tiger... but it eventually left Ashis and left,” said one of the companions of the victim.

Repeated incidents of attacks on crab hunters and fishermen in the Sunderbans mangrove area, particularly inside the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, has become a matter of concern for forest officials, who have appealed to villagers not to risk their lives by infiltrating the domain of tigers.

An official of South 24-Parganas divisional forest office said: “It is unfortunate that crab hunters have been inviting trouble repeatedly despite our repeated cautions.”
Panic gripped residents of Kashinagar village of Patharpratima in South 24-Parganas when they noticed pugmarks of a tiger on the banks of Thakuran river on Monday morning. Officials of forest department’s Raidighi range and a quick response team from Maipith were called. However, till Monday evening there was no trace of the tiger.