he ghastly incident where a youth was mauled to death by a white tiger in his Delhi zoo enclosure in September will now be part of medical journals.
The doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) who conducted an autopsy on Maqsood’s body, consider it a unique case of death caused by a tiger, which rarely comes for forensic examination.
“There are very few such cases documented in which wild cat attacks have been studied. This case is something different from others in terms of attack and injuries by the tiger on the youth. The death and pattern of injuries would have been different if the youth was killed by a wild tiger,” said Dr Adarsh Kumar, associate professor, forensic science department, AIIMS. The youth got at least 27 injuries. This was a case inside the zoo and an FIR was also registered, else such cases don’t come for a forensic investigation. The tiger was born and brought up in the zoo and he didn’t have any hunting skills.
"When we saw the video provided by the police, we could make out that he was playing with the youth and it seems that when people started pelting stones on him, the tiger got scared and dragged the youth in a hurry in a bid to go to a safer place,” he said.
Another interesting factor which the doctors found was that Maqsood had a tattoo inked of “Goddess Durga sitting on a tiger” on his right hand.
“It was also being said that the man was mentally unstable but it was interesting to know that he bore a tattoo with a tiger. There may be some psyche attached to the incident,” said Kumar.
Maqsood, (20), had fallen into a dry moat surrounding the tiger’s enclosure when he was mauled by the animal .
There are various accounts of how Maqsood fell into the moat. According to some eyewitnesses, he was leaning against the two-feet-high wall of the enclosure when he slipped into the moat.
But zoo officials and some other eyewitnesses said he had crossed the iron fence and jumped into the moat
