The Tamil Nadu Forest Department has been experiencing the task, which is getting more arduous day by day, as the mission of caging the tiger, which is named T23, is still far from getting accomplished. The wildlife officials have been carrying out incessant searches to trace and detain the predator for the past ten days and earlier, after a setback, the forest department had ordered the ground teams to shot it down as the local civilians had held protests to detain the tiger-at-large after their lives got disrupted. 

The forest department officials have been camped in Gudalur, in the Nilgiris district where the big cat is wandering and playing hide and seek. The tiger was initially seen in Devan Tea Estate in Masinagudi and the officials had deployed all the measures to detain it and the forest officials from Kerala have also been involving in the search.

Last week, the Chief Warden of Tamil Nadu Forest Department had issued the order to kill the tiger after it was suspected that it had killed the fourth civilian. Besides killing four people, the tiger had also killed several cattle and damaged the fields. There had been several turns in the decision of hunting it down as the forest department had later said that the tiger won't be killed, instead it would be captured alive and be caged in a zoo.

While the officials have been using drones and cameras to locate it, the order to kill it had sparked outrage from animal activists who demanded not to kill the tiger and claimed that it wasn't proven that it was a man-eater. Animal rights body People For Cattle in India (PFCI) has moved Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Madras High Court and sought a directive not to kill the wandering predator. 

On Tuesday, the PIL had come to the hearing before the High Court bench comprising of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice PD Audikesavalu and during the hearing, government pleader P Muthukumar had submitted on behalf of the principal chief conservator of forest that there was no plan to kill the tiger. He stated that the efforts were being taken to capture the tiger alive and to study what future course of treatment to be adopted.

Observing the submission, the bench has directed the Tamil Nadu forest department not to kill the tiger. The bench said, "Don't kill it immediately. It may not be a man-eater. It may have been misunderstood." The court said that the principal chief conservator of the forest will use his best discretion to ensure that the least number of people intrude into any forest since the natural habitat gets disturbed by the movement of a large posse of humans.

The bench has noted that the authorities are left free to deal with the relevant animal for its treatment and for ascertaining its conduct and behaviour. By ordering the forest department not to hunt down the predator, the bench had adjourned the hearing after the Dussehra holidays and instructed the state government to file a status report. Meanwhile, on Sunday, the forest department officials had brought two kumki elephants again from the Theppakadu Elephant Camp to locate the T23 tiger in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.

The kumki elephants named Srinivas and Udayan were brought to the operation area to help arm the drive of officials to trace and locate the tiger. According to reports, more logistics support had come from neighbouring forest departments in Kerala and Karnataka and Karnataka had sent a trained sniffer dog to trace the tiger. The Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and its vicinities are brought under the scanner as the officials are facing a double whammy of detecting the tiger and providing security to the local civilians and their fields.