Gadchiroli: A 45-year-old daily-wage labourer was allegedly mauled to death by a tiger while collecting wild mushrooms in a forest adjoining Vasa village under the Porla forest range in Gadchiroli district early Wednesday.The deceased, Balu Vitthal Raut, who depended on forest resources for his livelihood, entered the forest early on Sept 23 to collect mushrooms. When he failed to return home for several hours, his family alerted villagers, who launched a search operation.As the search could not be continued late in the night, the operation resumed early on Thursday morning. His body was found in the forest in the morning, nearly 24 hours after he had left home. The body had suffered severe injuries, with the legs severed from the torso. One of the legs was found around 12 metres from the main remains.Based on the injury pattern, the condition of the body, and tiger movement recorded in the forest corridor, forest and police officials inferred that Raut was killed in a tiger attack.Police and foresters carried out the panchnama and examination of the site before taking the dead body for postmortem.Range forest officer (RFO) Rajesh Panchbhai claimed that ex gratia aid of ₹20,000 has been given to the family of the deceased labourer and an additional ₹30,000 will be paid on Friday. The rest of the compensation amount will be provided after completion of documental formalities.The incident has heightened concern among villagers who regularly enter forests for firewood, tendu leaves, and seasonal forest produce.
