The residents in and around Gudalur in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu are still yet to breathe relief as the hide and seek from a wild cat has been disrupting their lives for weeks. The state forest department officials have been sifting the woods by deploying the measures to capture the tiger, what has been named T23. The quadruped has been on run by using its knowledge of the terrain and the search and efforts to capture it had hit the third week. However, the forest department officials are missing their target in dawn and dusk.

The search has been in an unprecedented fashion after it got intensified under the claim that the tiger is a man-eater. It was firstly spotted in the Devan tea estate in Gudalur and it was accused of killing four people and dozens of cattle, besides disrupting the normal lives of the locals. Apart from the on-foot search, the officials had also installed surveillance cameras, eagle-eyed trackers, and using the help of the forest officials in Kerala and kumki elephants to go deep into the woods. 

The T23 tiger was also a centre of debate in the Madras High Court recently after the animal activists had approached the court against the order of the Tamil Nadu Forest Department to kill the tiger after it killed the fourth civilian. The court had instructed not to kill the tiger immediately and it may not be a man-eater. The principal chief conservator of the forest had said that there was no plan to kill the tiger and affirmed that efforts are being taken to capture it alive. 

As the tiger is still on the run, the officials are facing a double whammy of detecting the wild cat and providing security to the local civilians and their fields. Earlier, the officials had thought that the tiger could have died in the woods as it was ailing with wounds. However, after eight days of remaining out of sight, the tiger was spotted again on October 12 at Ombetta forest range in an image trap camera at 3 am. After having the sight and location, the forest department officials had intensified their search, not to miss the target this time. 

However, they braced up a setback as they weren't able to locate the tiger. Amid these developments, the officials were informed by the passersby about the movement of a tiger near Masanagudi. According to reports, a group of men were repairing their vehicle in the night hours of Thursday (October 14) in Masanagudi. They had spotted a tiger passing the area and immediately informed the forest officials. A team of forest officials had arrived in the area at around 10 pm along with a team of doctors. After spotting the tiger in the woods, the officials had shot an anaesthetic injection towards the tiger to capturing it after it becomes unconscious. 

However, the target has been missed again as the tiger had escaped and disappeared into the woods even after injecting the needle post which the officials had gone deep into the forest by using the kumki elephants. They had searched till 2 am on Friday only to come with bare hands. After missing the tiger, the officials had temporarily halted the search drive and on the other hand, the forest department had also invited a condemnation for what has been spelt as a violation. 

The animal activists had alleged that the forest department officials had violated the rule in injecting an anaesthetic needle on the tiger. They say that as per the guideline of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the anaesthetic injection shouldn't be shot at the tiger after 6 pm and they raised a question of why the officials had done that at 10 pm. As the search is going on for three weeks, the residents of the area are instructed not to step into the woods and not to wander their cattle on the fields as the tiger may be in an ambush. The district administration was informed of the movements of the tiger. The police department was also informed to patrol the villages bordering the tiger reserve to ensure that the people don't push themselves into trouble.