Now the figure is 4, raising questions of mass poisoning,animal man conflict

The state was already in shock after a tiger family – father, mother and a cub were found dead in the jungles of the Mhadei wildlife sanctuary. One cub from the same family is still missing.

Now late on Wednesday even as the Forest department top officials were huddled in meetings, a fourth tiger was found dead.

This has once again brought to the fore questions of man intruding in tiger habitat with their cattle and for fertile forest land.

The first three were poisoned, forest department officials say, a fact corroborated by the chief minister Pramod Sawant who in tweet acknowledged this while informing that he had already ordered an inquiry into the deaths.

The carcass of tigress and cub were buried and found by forest officials during combing operations. 4 persons are in custody and are being interrogated.

High level meetings are on and the Health minister Vishwajeet Rane who is from the area has asked for a probe by a central agency.

The postmortem on two is also under progress.