Delhi Zoo Incident And The Unanswered Questions

Several people die in the large city of Delhi every day. Thousands of people die all over the world in every possible manner each passing day. But when a youth died in Delhi in the jaws of a tiger, his death immediately became a sensation. Was it because he was killed by a tiger that his death became headline of all newspapers? Would it really be such big news if he was killed by a tiger out in the wild? The answer is no. The news was not big because he was killed by a tiger but it was because he was killed by a tiger in a zoo. He died in circumstances and in a place that was least expected and came as a surprise to everyone.

Delhi Zoo Incident

His death left behind a trail of question, some of which were asked and some were not. Some of these questions will be answered and acted upon but several others will just remain unheard. I was not there at the zoo that day when it all went down so whatever I write here will just be an account of what I heard or read myself and what I derived at from all of it.

No one really knows or can tell how that youth happened to fall in a tiger’s moat but somehow he did. A newspaper reported him to be mentally unstable while another wrote that he was under the influence of alcohol. Answer to several questions probably died with the youth himself like what was he doing in a zoo alone, how did he happen to slip and fall, did he jump intentionally or did someone push him? Questions like these will never be answered but the biggest question that everyone asked of this entire incident was on the safety of these zoos that are a part of every major city.

One might wonder, what was the exact cause of the death? I am not talking in terms of forensics but what was it that led to the tiger killing the guy? Several people at the scene recorded the entire incident on their cellphones and there are a bunch of videos floating around on the web, shared on Watsapp and social media. All these videos start from a moment when the guy was already in the pit, crawled against the wall with the tiger staring at him right in the face. For the first few minutes, the tiger seemed equally surprised and dumbfounded as the victim himself. It keeps toying and pawing with the youth who in turn is scared witless and keeps throwing his hands in the air in an unexplainable manner. For a moment it seems he was pleading for the tiger to spare him with his hands folded but then the action keeps repeating it and it starts to seem that the guy himself doesn’t know what he was doing. He seems to be talking to himself but the words were unheard. There are also the voices of Tiger’s handler calling out, in order to get it away from the youth. The tigers looks in the direction of the voice, at its handler several time but remains standing right next to the victim. This goes on for a few minutes and then the tiger makes a move. It tries to pull the guy with its paw but the youth slips out and crawls back to the same spot. Just then, someone from the crowd throws a stone which hits the tiger in its head. The tiger looks up at the crowd, growls and then in a sudden move, nabs the youth by the neck and runs away towards the other end of its closure, away from the crowd. The youth still seems alive at this moment but starts to bleed. The tiger then lets him go, sits over him but then after a while again picks him up again by the neck and starts to run around in its enclosure. Slowly the life drains out of the youth and all movement ceases.

Can the tiger really be blamed here? One thing is certain from this entire incident. The tiger never attacked or mauled the youth. It simple picked him up by the neck but this action proved fatal for the victim. Even after he was dead, the tiger never attempted to eat him and slowly moved away. Have you ever seen a cat in the house or in your locality playing around with something? Or put something in front of cat that it cannot understand and gets surprised by it? It was the same way that the tiger reacted. It was born and bred in the zoo and had never killed a living thing, let alone a human being. When it found a live human in its moat, it was a total surprise. For minutes it just stood there trying to figure out what needs to be done. What provoked it were the pebbles that were thrown by the onlookers in order to save the guy. It probably just shied away and moved farther from the crowd, in privacy, but before doing so, it also picked up its new toy and took it along. Media reported the incident saying that the youth was attacked or mauled by the tiger which is not true at all. If you want to see a Tiger attack, check out the videos on National Geographic or Discovery. This tiger did not probably even know what the word attack means. It was brought up in zoo, was fed by humans all its life, is used to seeing humans everyday from a close distance and responds to a human’s (its handler’s) calls. Anyone who had been to a Zoo knows that animals like Tigers always shy away from the public. In this incident, this tiger had a huge crowd standing right above, shouting and throwing stones at it.  What else was it suppose to do if not shy away? And since when throwing a stone was enough to scare a Tiger? If the Tiger had attacked and mauled, the victim would be in pieces. There would be marks all over his body, not just on his neck.

Media blamed the zoo authorities for being negligent; acting so late and let the precious few minutes get wasted that could have saved the youth’s life. Blame was that the authorities need to have more guards posted. Zoo authorities blamed the victim stating that he was warned by the guard several times to not get too close but he did not listen. In my opinion, everyone except for the tiger takes a share of blame in this entire episode. The victim takes the blame for putting himself in a situation where he fell right into death’s jaws. The crowd that stood witnessed to this horrific incident takes the blame for provoking the tiger to attack. The zoo authorities take the blame for being clumsy and negligent but only in terms of making the boundary wall small enough for anyone to jump. By this I do not mean adults, but only Children because a move like this is not really expected out of an adult.

But the biggest blame is on all of us and the mentality that we live our lives in. I read somewhere that Indians do not believe in taking precaution but in raising eyebrows and I couldn’t help but agree with it. I have been to several zoos across the country and people trying to play hero by getting too close to an animal enclosure is not a rare incident. I have even seen people putting their hands in cages and throwing stuff at animals and in some cases, even trying to feed them. There was an incident at Delhi zoo itself when a drunken man walked into a lion enclosure. Lucky for him, the lioness totally ignored him and he survived. In another incident, a college professor put his hand in a leopard’s cage trying to take a close picture. What resulted from this attempt was his entire arm getting ripped off by the leopard and the professor dying a few moments after. Who can really help these people who put themselves in dangerous situations like these? If the victim was indeed mentally unstable, was it safe for his family to let him walk around free? If he was not mentally unstable, he himself was the reason for his horrific death. Zoo authorities can put up big cages, large boundaries but are we really that naive that we have to be told to stay safe? I mean what is next, a signboard to educate people that Tiger is a dangerous animal and is capable of killing you? With so many foolish opinions floating around, I was kind of expecting for someone to come up with the view of educating that Tiger that it should not kill people and if someone falls, it should treat the victim with love and care. Forget the zoo for a moment, even on the roads you will find people driving in a manner which can only be called foolish. They take wrong turns; get in one way, driving in opposite direction of coming traffic just to save the hassle of spending few minutes in driving till the next crossing. For example, take a look at the picture below. This guy jumped all the boundaries and got inside the lion enclosure just to prove that he was a macho. Could you really blame anyone but him if he died that day?

Fact is that we are only as safe as we can keep ourselves. Putting ourselves in dangerous situations and expecting others to react in quick and smart manner is not fair. Newspapers reported that the authorities could have stayed ready with tranquilizer guns but think about it, do they really expect someone to be so foolish to fall in a tiger’s enclosure? Is it really fair to blame them? Irony is that the entire world was surprised by the incident but expected the Zoo authorities to have stayed ready for such incident? I mean what are you saying, that they should expect all visitors as plain fools who came to the Zoo to risk their lives?

Another big question that no one is asking is the way media reported it. When I opened the newspaper that morning, there was a big picture on the front page of the terrified youth and the tiger starting at him. That snap was taken just moments before the killing happened. Knowing what followed, it was indeed a disturbing image. I could not just get it out my head all day long. That look on the youth’s face, knowing that he was about to die, was enough to disturb anyone emotionally. What was the need of publishing that photograph, just to sensationalize the incident? Is it really a sensation for the family of the victim? Was it really a sensation for people who saw that picture and remained stirred emotionally all day long? On every news channel, they kept playing a part of the clip showing the tiger running around with the victim in its jaws. They blurred out the human form but what was the point of doing that? Everyone knew what was there in the mouth of that tiger? What was the need of playing that clip? Was reporting the incident just not enough? Was it really a sensation for that youth’s 7 months pregnant wife to watch her husband’s dead body being dragged around by a tiger? They talked about responsibility but where was their own responsibility towards the viewers when they were playing that clip? Families including children watched it; one can only wonder the effect it may have created on their minds. The question that no one is asking is; is media not really over-doing things these days?

Imagine you read in the newspaper that a guy was killed in the zoo by a tiger but there were no photographs or videos of the incident. Would this incident become so popular still? Probably not. It was not the the death that people were interested in, it was the “How” that got them curious. That curiosity was appeased by the photographs and the videos. We see videos of animals killing animals everyday but an actual video of a Tiger killing a person is extremely rare and that is what made this entire episode sensational. Everyone wanted to know more about how it happened.  A young life was lost but where was the sympathy? Newspapers published a large picture on the front page to make it look more dramatic, news channels played the clip for two days endlessly to gain more viewers and people watched the video on their cellphones, laughing and expressing their opinions about it. If there was nothing to stare at with eyes wide open in amazement then no one cares. Everyone made fun of the victim but media was the only one to gain out of it, they literally tried to cash the death and made profits. They kept repeating the same news over and over again but did they even once mention or try to maybe raise some money for that victim’s wife who is 7 months pregnant? This did not even end here. Someone tried to give this tragic incident a religious or maybe political view when a message started to circulate stating that the victim was a wanted man in charges of insulting a Mata Shera Wali’s idol. The message claimed that because he committed this sin, this is why he was claimed by a Tiger. Then someone tried to make a little fun out of it by circulating another message stating that the forensics report revealed that Tiger was trying to save the youth from stoning by trying to take him to a safer spot. In this attempt, the Tiger accidentally killed the victim. My question to all these people is,  “The tiger killed because it is an animal, incapable of any rational thinking or emotions, but how different are you from an animal then? ?”