‘No one is safe in Madhya Pradesh,’ says former Chief Minister Kamal Nath after another Cheetah dies in Kuno National Park

On Tuesday, July 11, one more African cheetah died in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP), which brings the total number of cheetahs that have died in India to seven in the last three months.

Reacting to Cheetah’s death, Former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and State Congress Chief Kamal Nath said that all cheetahs will die due to mismanagement of the BJP government. Be it women, be it Cheetahs or be it adivasis, no one is safe in Madhya Pradesh.

As a part of India’s ambitious Project Cheetah, the big cats were brought to India from South Africa and Namibia, with an aim to introduce the African cheetah in some of central India’s grasslands that were once home to the Asiatic subspecies before they vanished.

Early morning on July 11, the monitoring team that conducts daily inspections of the Cheetahs and monitors any changes in behaviour and other things at the KNP observed a wound just above the throat of the male Cheetah Tejas. The animal was in the enclosure and was brought to KNP from South Africa in February this year. 

After that monitoring team informed the veterinary doctors in Palpur; the doctors at the vets attended the Cheetah and found that the wound was deep. The animal died at around 2 pm on July 11, as per a statement by the Madhya Pradesh forest department. A post-mortem will reveal the real cause of death, the statement added.

“Cheetah Tejas, aged around four years, died in KNP due to suspected infighting,” the principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) of wildlife and chief wildlife warden of MP, J.S. Chauhan, told the news agency PTI. 

The animal was in an enclosure at the time of the incident, he said. 

With the passing of Tejas, the number of big cats who died during Project Cheetah stands at seven now. Three of these were the offspring of a female named Siyaya, a cheetah. The other four were adults.