Bear killed men, forest personnel killed bear: Who is the culprit?

The shocking scenes of a bear attacking a man in Tumkur were making rounds in social media. More shocking was to see that in midst of the tragedy going on in front of the people some were managed to take videos and photos of the incident instead of trying to save the victim.

As per eye witness there were around two thousand people gathered in the spot to see the rampage by the bear. But nobody tried to save the man named Timmanna who was working as a waterman. The footage shows that the bear was rupturing the head of the victim and everybody shouting and trying to scare away the wild animal. Even police officials came to the spot and they too preferred to watch the brutal scene as mere spectators. Later the bear was killed by the forest officials by putting six bullets into its body.But the question here is who is the culprit. Is it the bear which was starving and was searching for the food or is it the people who indulged in taking photographs instead of saving the victim.

Wild animals especially tiger, leopard, lion or bear are tend to attack humans as they are carnivorous animals. Now a days due to lack of food and habitat these wild animals often visit human residential area and pose danger to the people. On November 17 also as Timmanna was on his way to work the bear attacked him and brutally killed him.  Earlier also the same bear had attacked a man named Somanna who went to the hill to graze his cattle.

But the life of Timmanna could have certainly saved had people shown some courage to intimidate the wild bear by running close to it together all at once instead of taking videos and posting it on social media. The craze for getting noticed in social media shave made man less responsive towards society.

More over even the police who had riffles and lathis with them feared to reach close to the bear. It’s a wild animal and like all wild animals bear also gets intimidated when humans get close to it. Sometime it gets furious and attacks people but many times animal prefer to stay away from human beings. Even a tiger or a leopard runs away when people in a group reach close to it. So a wild bear which is not as attacking as compared to tiger or leopard would run away quickly.

The sad part is that the bear was later killed by forest officials. Why? There could have put it in a cage and transported it to some remote parts of the jungle or just handed over to some zoo. But the authorities thought the bear was posing danger to human lives and without any second thought killed it inhumanely. It’s like you killed people, we kill you policy from the forest department officials. But the reality is different although the bear had killed Somanna before it attacked Timmanna the forest officials had not made any preparation to catch the animal.

Even after it killed Timmanna the forest personnel came to the spot without any net, cage or even tranquilizer to disable the bear. The tranquilizers had to be brought from Bannerugatta which the forest personnel never did.  It clearly shows the failure from the forest official’s part. Instead they preferred to shoot the wild animal and solve the problem forever. Now after few days another bear will appear in the region and the solution to save the human lives is kill it. In Tumakur case both Timmanna and the bear could have been saved but unfortunately that never happened.