Justice BV Nagarathna, who was also a member of the Bench stated that she had come across a newspaper report of many tiger deaths recently. 

“How can the tiger population rise then?”, Justice Nagarathna queried.

India had already recorded 30 tiger deaths, this year.  This gave rise to the Bench passing the order through the counsel appearing for the Centre informed that Additional Solicitor General Aiswarya Bhati was busy in another court.

“This is very pertinent”, the Bench observed while posting the matter to come up next, later in March. 

During a previous hearing, the Centre government informed the Supreme Court that there are 2967 tigers spread in 53 tiger reserves overall in the country as per a 2018 census. This number even constitutes 70% of the world tiger population and figures continue to grow.

Advocate Anupam Tripathi submitted the PIL in which he mentioned that 41 tigers were killed in 7 months i.e., from January to August 9 in the year 2015, as per the data provided by the National Tiger Conservation Authority.  The plea also stated that there were 74 tiger deaths reported in the year 2016, the petitioner said while submitting that these wild cats were killed by the locals residing near the reserve forests either due to man-animal conflict or poaching.

It was alleged that the tigers are being indiscriminately, barbarically and monstrously killed either by poisoning by the locals or by the authorities, shooting by the Forest Guards, poaching etc. Thus, tigers are being killed each day in the cruellest fashion.