Deep in the desert of Asia once roamed the deadliest man-eating tiger, whose desire for human blood saw no limits.
This is the chilling story of the Champawat tiger that devoured a record 436 people in Nepal and India around 130 years ago.
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Nicknamed the “Demon”, the Champawat Tiger was a female Royal Bengal tiger – one of the largest feline species in the world – who began chasing people and killing them for meat.
The wild beast inflicted a seven-year reign of terror in rural areas of Nepal and India before it was finally shot to death by a lone Irish hunter named Jim Corbett.
Operating with “almost supernatural efficiency”, it began attacks on the village of Rupal, in western Nepal, in the last years of the 19th century.
Author Dane Huckelbridge described the beast as the “most prolific serial killer of human life the world has ever seen.”
The tiger mainly targeted children and women who went to the forest to collect firewood and livestock, killing them.
For many years, it attacked and killed at least one victim per week, causing an overwhelming number of deaths in the area.
However, Nepalese authorities were forced to do something to stop the deadly attacks after the number of murders surpassed 200.
In 1903, the local community together with army the soldiers planned to lure the tiger in an attempt to capture it and, if they were lucky, kill it.
They hung goats around the village to tempt the tiger and waited with sticks and machetes to launch an attack on the beast.
Despite managing to kill the tiger when it arrived, the army of men managed to drive the beast away and take it across the border into India.
The Champawat Tiger quickly adapted to the new area and began its killing spree, claiming 236 more lives in just a few years.
Life for the local population quickly became hell – children and women were forced to stay indoors all the time and men refused to work.
Huckelbridge writes in his book: “They became true refugees in their own homes, pursued by a specter that seemed capable of killing them at will.
“The entire camp was paralyzed as no one knew where or when the tiger might attack.”
The tiger became a master at hunting people and devised unique strategies to escape.
He would travel great distances between villages and even go to new territories to escape death from the local population and hunters.
Despite many efforts by the government – which even placed a bounty on the tiger – no one was able to kill the wild beast.
BEGINNING OF THE END
However, along came Jim Corbett – a skilled Irish marksman who was born and raised in India during the British Raj.
He became one of the most celebrated tiger hunters, having killed 50 rogue beasts that collectively killed around 2,000 people.
Corbett was tasked with exterminating the Champawat Tiger, who managed to follow him using a blood trail.
In 1907, shortly after the wild beast had killed its last victim – a 16-year-old girl – the Irish hunter shot the tiger dead.
His first shots hit the tiger in the chest and shoulder, and his last shot hit her in the foot, causing her to faint.
The beast was just 20 feet away from Corbett when he fired the fatal shot.
A post-mortem report showed that Chmpawat Tiger’s right-sided upper and lower canines were broken as a result of an old injury.
Corbett suggested that this injury may have been the reason the beast stopped hunting its natural prey – and instead attacked humans for meat.
A lover of Indian wildlife, Corbett has spent the last two decades of his life campaigning to protect big cats.
He later helped establish a protected area in Uttarakhand, India, for wild animals, which was later named the famous Jim Corbett National Park in his honor.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
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