Kaliabar: It was a unique sight at the Timona Basti area under the Kaliabar subdivision of the Nagaon district on Monday. Gun-wielding Assam police personnel escorted about 25 children to their school.
Yes, fear of attack by a tiger, which had strayed from a nearby forest, has forced the Nagaon district administration to arrange security personnel to ensure that children from the Timona Basti reach school unharmed.
Locals said that the children had been skipping school for the last few days. "Most parents had stopped sending their children to school after a tiger was spotted loitering around the area for the last few days," said one of the parents.
The presence of the children in the school became mandatory on Monday as the Assam government started the Gunotsav, a massive exercise to assess the quality of education in all the government-run schools across the state.
"The presence of the children is mandatory today as there was Gunotsav which started today. The children of Timona Basti had to pass through a tea estate to reach the Timona Basti LP School. The was fear among the locals that the tiger might attack the children and so we are here to take the children to school. We are going to drop them home when the school is over," said one of the police personnel.
The fear of a tiger attack emanated from the fact that locals had spotted a Royal Bengal Tiger in the area a few days back. "The village Timona Basti is located close to Kamakhya Reserve Forest. The area has lots of tea gardens and sometimes the Tigers stray out as these are all their corridors. A few days back one of the Royal Bengal Tiger strayed out and was spotted by the locals. Although the tiger is not outside the forest now, it is difficult to convince the locals and we had to arrange for security for the children today," said Ranger of Salona Forest range, Bibhuti Mazumdar.
"We have arranged patrols and issued an alert in the area. Whenever we are informed about the tiger sighting, we send out teams to ensure the safety of the people," he said.
"This is not an isolated incident. We have been living in fear of tigers for a long time now. We have not been sending our children to school for the last few days as the tiger is still loitering in the area," said a parent in the locality.
The Kaliabar area had been witnessing several incidents of tiger straying from the nearby forests leading to panic among the locals. Last month, the mutilated body of a person was recovered from a tea garden in Kaliabor and it was suspected that the person was mauled by stray tigers. The Kaliabar region falls in between the Kaziranga National Park and Orang National Park and the wildlife from the two parks often takes the corridor through the Kaliabar area to migrate. The area has been grappling with tiger-related terror for over three years, particularly in areas like Kaliabor Tea Gardens, Kamakhya Village, Sonari Village, and Sonari Tea Gardens.
