A massive hunt has been launched in this part of northern India to catch the killer cat. At this point, two months into the Royal Bengal's deadly spree, Khan sees no good ending.
The young wildlife conservationist knows the animal will either lose its own life or, at best, be captured and sent off to a zoo. It's either the death penalty or life imprisonment for the Queen of the Jungle.
Either way, it will be wretched for both the cat and the conservationist after years of efforts to save India's tigers from extinction. But frightened villagers and the families of victims want a swift end to the tiger's reign of terror.
The tiger in question, believed to be a 4-year-old female, is thought to have killed 10 people, some mauled beyond recognition. Since late December, she has painted a trail of blood over an 80-mile swath of India's Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand states, where villagers are left with a kind of pervasive fear they have never before known.
The tiger's last victim, a 50-year-old man, was killed February 10. She is past due for another kill. Nobody knows where she might strike.
Still, Khan is hopeful that he and a team of conservationists from the Wildlife Trust of India can get to the predator before anyone else does.
Dwindling population
On this day, conservationists and hunters have gathered to comb through territory not far from Jim Corbett National Park, India's oldest wildlife park and one of several government-funded reserves set up to help conserve tigers.
At the start of the 20th century, nearly 40,000 tigers roamed freely in what was then British India. But the cats fell victim to hunters, poachers and development, and now their number has dwindled to 1,706, according to the last census conducted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority. Even with that low number, India remains home to the largest tiger population in the world.
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