V1VEK DESHPANDE, NAGPUR, NOVEMBER 11 EVEN as the leopard attacks in Vejgaon have the Forest Department on edge, more trouble is brewing over the shooting down of a tiger in the Talodhi range north of the Tadoba-Andheri Tiger Reserve last November. Ajay Marathe, a Mumbai resident, had filed a Right to Information (RTI) application seeking details of the incident `cident after allegations by animal right activists that the police sharpshooters had killed the wrong animal. Marathe claimed that according to the information provided 'vided to him under the Act, the animal supposedly creating trouble was a tigress while the one shot dead is a tiger. Moreover, the pugmarks of the dead tiger did not match those of the animal the sharp shooters claim to have killed, reports in a section of the media on Monday, said. The reports also claim that Marathe alleged that it was the pressure exerted by local politicians to show quick results that led to the hasty killing. Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) B Majumdar on Monday stuck to its stand that the right animal had been shot. "It has been clearly evidenced by the facts that no incident has been reported for the last one year in that area, nor has any tiger movement been seen there," he said. Majumdar also said that pugmarks could never be a reliable test for checking whether the same animal was involved. "We get different impressions on different kinds of soils and surfaces. The same had happened with the Talodhi tiger too. And when you take pugmark impressions of a dead tiger, it would be always of different size and shape since it is not taken when the animal is actually standing on the natural surfaces. So, to say that different pugmarks mean different animals is simplistic and uninformed opinion," he said. "Fortunately, we had cameratrap pictures of the animals and when we matched the stripes of the one in the picture with the dead, we were left with little doubt that we had killed the problem animal only," Majumdar added. The tiger had attacked and killed four persons in the area in a month leading to a public outcry and forcing the PCCF to issue shooting orders. The Forest Department had received a lot of flak from activists for not trying to capture the animal alive. The Forest Department clarified that it had erroneously claimed that it was a tigress on the basis of the camera-trap pictures where no testicles were visible. Meanwhile, Wildlife scientist Vidya Athreya also questioned the reliability of the pugmarks and said, "believing or inferring anything on the basis of pugmarks can be very tricky as they could come out different in different situations for the same animal."