Chandrika Prasad, a 65-year-old man succumbed to death in a suspected tiger attack in the Dudhwa buffer zone of Uttar Pradesh Lakhimpur Kheri district on Friday night, officials confirmed.
The incident took place near his residence in Vrindavan Colony in Sampurnanagar while he had gone to the fields.
When Prasad did not return home for several hours, his son Vishnu and other relatives began searching for him.
Their worst fears were confirmed when they discovered his partially eaten body in a nearby sugarcane field.
The family members also claimed that they briefly spotted the tiger responsible before it fled into the adjoining forest after they raised an alarm.
Dudhwa buffer zone deputy director Kirti Chaudhary confirmed the killing, adding that pugmarks from the site would determine whether the attacker was a tiger or a leopard.
The tragic incident comes just a day after a 10-year-old girl was fatally attacked by a leopard in another sugarcane field in Khushipur Patihan village.
Chaudhary expressed condolences to the bereaved family, assuring that compensation would be provided as per norms.
She said patrolling in the Pallia and Sampurnanagar ranges had been intensified and additional cameras installed to monitor big cat movement in the region.
