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* THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHITHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 20146 TIMES CITY | DEATH AT THE ZOO
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
People Killed By Animals
Source: NCRB
788
83
225301
194134
198 215 196 220 214
847 864
1007
827
962 981
1233
959 998
76.8
75.9
74.774.1
76.373.9 65.7
76.360.2
70.9 66.8
79.8 78.675.3
76.7
77.2 76
79.9
79.6 72.7
The injured data presumably includes only serious injuries as minor hu-man-animal confl icts like dog bite and so on is not reported to the police.
Total KilledTotal InjuredMale %
MAN-ANIMAL CONFLICT
New Delhi: A day after a whitetiger killed a youth who hadfallen into its enclosure, a two-member probe team of CentralZoo Authority visited the Delhizoo twice on Wednesday.Though it is yet to file a report,the team didn’t fault the zoo forthe tragedy.
“We can’t say it’s the zoo’sfault. To be honest, their enclo-sure is larger than what CZAguidelines provide for. Also,there are three barriers to keepvisitors at a safe distance.There are boards warning vis-
grade enclosures to more cus-tomized ones, simulating thenatural habitat of the animalkept in them. “The new masterplans for zoos may be tailored tothe needs of each animal sothat visitors understand it bet-ter and the animal, too, is morecomfortable. For instance, ear-lier you could find a red pandain an Ahmedabad zoo whereit’s extremely hot in summer.We will now try to recreate itsHimalayan habitat there,” theofficial said.
On Wednesday, membersfrom the Animal Welfare Boardof India also visited the zoo.
barriers be installed at someenclosures. Delhi zoo had triedto implement it, but it didn’twork out.
“They break and are not ve-ry useful. We are still planningto fix one for another white ti-ger enclosure next to Vijay’s,”said Riaz Khan, curator (educa-tion), Delhi zoo.
Unruly conduct of visitorswas another factor that dis-couraged the move. “Peoplewill break them. If visitors be-have, only then can they beused,” an official said.
But the officials did talkabout the need to gradually up-
ng territory probably tookover,” the official added.
The team, headed by S CSharma, the founder member-secretary of CZA, is analysingfootage of the incident and isexpected to submit its report ina day or two. However, CZA hadearlier suggested that glass
itors against disturbing ani-mals. I can’t imagine how theman jumped over the metalstand-off hedge and the wall.We are extremely saddened by what happened but the en-closure meets the norms,” saidan official.
To stress on the safety as-pect, the official said that whitetigers donated to zoos abroadand in India were all bred inthat enclosure. “The tiger wasstartled to see the man up close.He has never had close physicalcontact with any human being;even the keepers feed him fromoutside. His instinct of securi-
Can’t fault zoo for the tragedy: CZATIMES NEWS NETWORK The zoo’s enclosure for
the tiger is larger thanwhat CZA guidelines provide for. Also, thereare three barriers to keepvisitors at a safe distance
New Delhi: A pall of gloomhas descended over a dingyhutment located below theZakhira flyover in centralDelhi, at Anand Parbat, onWednesday. Maqsood, 20,who was mauled to death by awhite tiger at the Delhi zooon Tuesday, lived here withhis family.
Almost 24 hours after histragic death, the family rec-ollects that it was his new-found love for tigers that hadled to his death. A randomvisit to the zoo sometime inJune had got him obsessedwith tigers and he oftenspoke about it to his wife andfamily members. The visitsbecame frequent after he losthis job as a porter a fewweeks ago.
Maqsood had married Fa-tima, a woman from Kolkata,a year ago. Of late, he hadheard about stories of Ben-gal tigers and how a tiger hadmauled two men at Alipurzoo when they had gone togarland the animal back in1995. “He never told us whatwas it about tigers that hadaroused his curiosity somuch but these stories usedto excite him and he oftenshared his experiences at thezoo,” said Mohammad Tahir,his grandfather.
Maqsood’s friends saythat his obsession only grewand he would often slip out ofhis house in the afternoonand visit the zoo to watch thetigers, and lions. The fact
that he had lost his job fourmonths ago gave him ampletime. He often told his moth-er he was going out to look fora job but instead landed atthe zoo. He used the littlemoney he had saved to buytickets at the zoo.
“He had gone there evenlast Tuesday and told thechildren stories about thewhite tigers after his re-turn,” said Adil, a friend whoowns a grocery shop outsidethe colony. He said Maqsoodhad dropped out of school ineighth class and was work-ing as a labourer since then.
His relatives say hisdeath has brought his par-ents together. They had beenliving separately for the past
few years over some differ-ences. Maqsood lived withhis mother, Ishrat, whoworks as a household help.His father, Mehfuz alias Par-desi, works as a rickshaw-puller in Anand Parbat while
lost his job many times. Wetook him for treatment toRML Hospital. He was beingcounselled and was undermedication. He had showedsome improvement of late,”said Ishrat.
Maqsood often angeredhis employers due to his for-getful and easygoing nature.He had lost his last job of un-loading sacks from trucks af-ter he went chasing someanimal. That job used to earnhim anything between Rs100-150. His last employer,Lalit, who owns a cardboardmaking factory at AnandParbat, said Maqsood wouldoften go and do others’ workand leave the sacks behind.“This had annoyed me and Iasked him to leave fourmonths ago,” he said.
His neighbours remem-ber him as a happy-go-luckyyouth who would rarelyspeak to anyone and walkedaround with earplugs. “Hedid not have a sim card in hismobile phone and used it on-ly to click pictures or listen tomusic. He also had tigers’picture in his phone,” saidSatish, a former classmatewho also got him a job at a lo-cal factory.
Maqsood’s body washanded over to his family onWednesday afternoon and hewas buried at a local grave-yard. Delhi Police are yet toquetion zoo officials and re-cord their statements. Thezoo protocol is being studiedafter which the cops will ver-ify if it was followed or the of-ficials were negligent.
his younger son, Mehmood,works in Jaipur. “The firstthing that came to my mindwas to inform my husbandsince I have no one else. Wewent and faced the situationtogether,” said Ishrat.
Maqsood’s wife, Fatima,who is seven months preg-nant, is at her hometown,Kolkata. It was a harrowingexperience for her as TVchannels played the mobileclips and pictures of her hus-band being attacked by the ti-ger all through Tuesday andeven on Wednesday. “She isinconsolable and has fallenill since she saw her husbandon TV and has now left forDelhi,” said Tahir.
“He was erratic and had
Maqsood Spent Savings On Zoo Tickets, Regaled Children With Stories
HER PILLAR OF SUPPORT FALLS: Maqsood lived with his mother Ishrat in a hut under Zakhira flyover
Piyal Bhattacharjee & Sanjeev Rastogi
Guard Praveen had warned him
New Delhi: Vijay, the white ti-ger, which mauled 20-year-oldMaqsood to death on Tuesday,is behaving normally and hisvitals are stable, say veterinar-ians. The big cat has been keptunder observation followingTuesday’s incident. OnWednesday morning, zoo doc-tors found that Vijay had eatenabout 10 kg of meat, his dailyintake. Panneer Selvam, thezoo veterinary officer, said Vi-jay appeared “calm”.
Selvam, who saw somefootage of the incident re-leased on Wednesday, said thatinitially, Vijay appeared to beplayful. “From Vijay’s ges-tures it doesn’t appear that hewas angry or in an attackingmood. I think someone in thecrowd hurled a stone at Vijay,which irritated him. Vijay wasborn in the zoo. He can kill aprey but can’t tear a body. Hedoesn’t have those skills. Themother usually trains the cubshow to hunt and how to eat inthe wild. In this case, Vijaydidn’t get any training,” saidSelvam. There was no need togive him any drugs for anxietyor stress, Selvam confirmed.
“Zoo-born animals like Vi-jay don’t have a tendency to at-tack. But natural laws of thewild also apply here. In thewild, there are three imagina-ry borders that the tiger makesaround itself. When someonecrosses the first one, the tigerwill try to escape, when the sec-ond line is crossed, it will feelthreatened and once the thirdline is crossed, the animal
knows it’s a sign of danger,”added Selvam.
“But in the video Vijay ap-pears to be playing with theyouth. While the noise mayhave irritated him, we can’ttell whether Vijay would haveleft him if there was no dis-turbance from the crowd,”said Selvam who will keep thetiger under observation for atleast three more days.
Shyam, Vijay’s keeper, alsoasserted that he had never
been aggressive. “He is a verygentle animal. Obviously be-ing a tiger he has the power toattack but Vijay has neverbeen aggressive,” said Shyamwho managed to lure Vijay in-to his enclosure after the inci-dent on Tuesday.
“I was banging the enclo-sure gate so that he comes in.We also used meat to lure him.After a few minutes he came inon his own,” he said.
Selvam said he felt sorryfor Maqsood as he was under-going psychological treatmentbut cautioned that such people“shouldn’t be allowed to cometo the zoo”.
After seeing new footage,Selvam said he couldn’t havedone much. “It was a matter offive minutes. We have tran-quilizers ready. In fact, I havesyringe loaded for such anemergency but a tranquilizertakes about 10 to 15 minutes to
sedate the animal. We alsohave nets and lathis but therewas no time when I reachedthe spot. The man was dead al-ready,” he said.
Another problem that theDelhi zoo faces is that it doesn’thave the drugs that can sedateany animal in seconds. “Weuse ketamine and xylazinehere which takes about 10 min-utes. Overdose can obviouslykill the animal,” Selvam said.
Big cat calm, behavingnormally, say doctors
‘PREDATORY INSTINCT NEVER GOES’: Maqsood got too close
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: If you’re travell-ing from Okhla to Jasola Vi-har, a string of 21 “portals”awaits you. These huge con-crete pillars which span theroad have been constructedby Delhi Metro as part of itscorridor from Janakpuri toBotanical Garden.
“The set of 24 portals orpillars is being constructed asthere are a number of engi-neering challenges along thisstretch,” said Delhi MetroRail Corporation (DMRC)spokesman Anuj Dayal.
According to Dayal, por-tals are constructed if thereare curves or shift of align-ment from one side of theroad to another.
“For example, there areportals between Moolchandand Kailash Colony Metrostations on the Mandi Houseto Badarpur section wherethe alignment shifts from leftto the middle of the road nearLady Shri Ram College,” ex-plained Dayal. Out of the 24portals, work on 21 has beencompleted so far.
The portals have been putup between Okhla Phase IIIand Jasola Vihar-Shaheen
duct will pass over 24 portals,instead of the piers that areused on most elevated sec-tions. So many portals on onestretch are rare.
The height of the portalsis 5.5m above the road and thewidth varies from 12-21m, de-pending on the road widthand the area to be covered.The work on the stretch start-ed in May 2013 and will be fin-ished by October 2014.
passing right above,” said aMetro official.
Metro claims the piers ofthe portals have been strate-gically placed so that traffic isnot affected. “DMRC has en-sured there is no compromiseon road space and road geom-etry,” added Dayal.
Delhi Metro also claimsthat the architectural land-mark of this elevated Metrosection will be that the via-
Bagh because of the topogra-phy of the road, said Dayal.“The alignment first shiftsfrom the left of the Modi Millflyover to the right of the roadtowards Jamia Millia Isla-mia. Also, on many stretchesthat fall on the 6km-long road,there are no medians wherepiers can be erected. There-fore, portals have been putwith portal piers on two sidesof the road and the viaduct
‘Portals’ on difficult Metro stretch
Anindya Chattopadhyay
STRUCTURAL NEED: The pillars are needed due to the topography on the Janakpuri-Botanical Garden line
New Delhi: Prime MinisterNarendra Modi on Wednes-day called on finance minis-ter Arun Jaitley who is ad-mitted to Max hospital inSaket. Hospital authoritiessaid the PM was with Jaitleyfor nearly 45 minutes andleft around 10.30pm.
Traffic movement insouth Delhi was disrupted
for hours as the VVIP visitprompted police to close cer-tain routes. The Malviya Na-gar Metro station, too, wasshut down for a few hours inthe evening.
Police said that Press En-clave Road was completelyclosed for public from 8pmonwards, leading to a diver-sion through the Outer RingRoad, which led to a rise in
traffic volume during peakhours. Police said that theincrease in traffic volumefuelled snarls in the area.
“The area was virtuallyturned into a fortress andnot even emergency vehi-cles were allowed to pass. Ihave been stuck here for thepast two hours,” said ManavChaddha, a businessmanheading to Saket City Hospi-tal to meet his parents.
Traffic heading to KhirkiExtension and Malviya Na-gar was diverted throughAdhchini crossing orSheikh Sarai leading tosnarls on the roads leadingto the colonies as well.
By 9pm the situation wassuch that both the OuterRing Road and the BRT wascompletely chock-a-blockleading to huge snarls in en-tire south Delhi. It took thepolice more than two hoursto clear the mess off the Chi-rag Delhi crossing.
Police said that addition-al personnel were deployedto clear the jams from Auro-bindo Marg and Josip BrozTito Marg crossing.
Modi visits Jaitley,gridlock in S Delhi
Press Enclave Roadwas closed for publicfrom 8pm and traffichad to be diverted toOuter Ring Road
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
‘PLAYFUL AT FIRST’: Zoo officials said the tiger didn’t look angry or in an attacking mood initially
New Delhi: Lieutenant gover-nor Najeeb Jung wants DelhiPolice commissioner B S Bassito give his force an image ma-keover. On Wednesday, hemade it clear to the top brassthat “the perception about Del-hi Police has to change”, forwhich “dishonesty of any kindhas to become an anathema”.
“This can only be done ifpride is restored in the uni-form,” the LG said. He askedBassi and his team to arrive atthe best solutions. Giving theexample of a recent circularfrom the CP on police not beingauthorized to check illegal con-struction, Jung said that suchstray instances damage thereputation of the police.
Jung urged officers to en-sure they do not let any bully-ing, extortion, or any form ofcorruption, go unchecked.
Jung also directed landowning agencies to expedite al-lotments for new police sta-tions after Bassi informed himthat 32 of 181 stations are beingrun from rented buildings andmakeshift structures.
Change deptimage: LG topolice chief
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
His obsession with tigers led him to his death
New Delhi: The tragic incident atthe Delhi zoo could have been avoid-ed had the guards posted there beenmore vigilant. It also exposed the factthat the security staff were not prop-erly trained to manage a large crowd,spot potential mischief makers, im-pose discipline on visitors and teachthem how to respect animals and be-have in the zoo environment.
In fact, Praveen, the guard postedat the white tiger’s enclosure, had re-portedly seen Maqsood throwingstones at Vijay about 10 minutes be-fore he jumped over the iron railing.Praveen claimed on Wednesday thathe had even whistled to caution Maq-sood and other “unruly” visitors. Healso said it was difficult for him tomanage nearly 100 visitors trying tocatch a glimpse of the animal.
The Delhi zoo has outsourced theentire security work to Eagle HunterPvt Ltd, a private agency. There are
about 42 guards, who work in threeshifts—morning, afternoon and eve-ning. This makes up for about 14
communicate with each other. Attimes they also carry lathis to disci-pline the crowd. Riaz Khan, curator(education), said that every otherday there are people trying to dosome mischief. “We call the police.They are here every weekend whenthe crowd gets unmanageable. Thereis also a PCR van waiting outside thezoo,” he said.
Zoo officials do not document thenumber of visitors being fined.“Once in a while the guards bring er-ring visitors. As per the Wildlife Pro-tection Act, we can fine them Rs2,000. But we usually impose Rs 100or Rs 200 fine depending on the of-fence,” said an employee, who is in-charge of the security at the zoo.
When TOI visited the zoo onWednesday, there were visitors whoseemed drunk. They screamed andcreated nuisance, being indifferentto the fact that their behavior coulddisturb animals. Even guards ap-peared to be soft with such visitors.
guards per shift to manage 20 beatsin the zoo. Many enclosures even re-main unmanned. Moreover, their at-trition rate appears to be quite highas most guards TOI spoke to saidthey were new, some only a few daysold in the zoo. Their training seemsto be quite general in nature, notsuited for the complex needs of ma-naging zoo visitors.
“We get basic training for allkinds of security jobs. It’s not specif-ic to the zoo. But managing crowd ispart of our training. We whistle todisperse or alert crowds,” said Abhi-lash, one of security guards from Ea-gle Hunter.
Despite these claims, the guardsat the zoo appear to be untrained forthe challenges. “People scream,throw stones at the animals. Whatcan we do if so many people misbe-have? It is not possible to drag eachone to the director’s office,” said an-other guard.
The guards carry wireless sets to
Guards not trained to handle crises
UNPREPARED AND ILL-EQUIPPED
Sanjeev Rastogi
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
PTI
Sanjeev Rastogi
Another tiger in the enclosure
New Delhi: A 55-year-old advocate was allegedly at-tacked with a knife by twomen, one of them an Afri-can, who had come posing as clients in south Delhi’sHauz Rani area on Wednes-day night.
The incident was report-ed around 8pm when Mo-hammad Saeed Hussain, aresident of Kalkaji, wasabout to leave his office.
The two men barged inand asked him to help themwith a case. An argumentbroke out after Hussainasked them to come onThursday. One of themwhipped out a knife and heldHussain by his throat. WhenHussain resisted, the assai-lant put a gash on his neckand fled. Hussain was takento Max hospital and is stable.
“The accused have beenidentified and will soon bearrested. We are waiting forthe victim’s statement,”said DCP, south, Prem Nath.A case of attempt to murderhas been registered.
Knife attackon lawyer insouth Delhi
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
