Overview
- Mahouts Rameshwar, Irshad, Bramhadin and Ayyub witnessed a tiger climb onto the rhino in the water pool and drove it away.
- Officials identified the dead rhino as Rajeshwari, an approximately 30-year-old female recorded as in-bred in Dudhwa’s population.
- Forest teams used trained elephants and earthmovers to recover the 2.5‑tonne carcass as a tiger lingered nearby, then conducted a panel-led post-mortem confirming tiger-inflicted injuries and buried the remains per protocol.
- The killing occurred at Amha Tal inside the fenced Rhino Rehabilitation Area‑1 in the South Sonaripur range of the reserve.
- Wildlife experts describe such tiger-on-rhino attacks as rare in Dudhwa, where rhinos have been reintroduced and managed under Project Rhino since 1984, with additional animals housed in a second enclosure.