Mumbai’s Byculla Zoo loses two tigers in two months

Officials also maintained that the deaths of the two tigers are absolutely unrelated and that medical records do not indicate that one incident may have triggered the other.

Rudra was born to Shakti and Karishma in November 2022. Civic officials said Rudra’s immunity was very weak since birth, to the extent that he had to be hand-held after he was born.

“Rudra’s size was smaller and he was also underweight. In comparison, the other three-year-old cub, Jay, was very healthy. Rudra’s health parameters remained below the normal level. At the age of three months, Rudra contracted a Trypanosoma infection which led to temporary loss of vision. His vision was restored in less than a month. Following this, all the four tigers including Rudra, Shakti, Karishma and Jay were inoculated with the Trypanosoma vaccine,” said an official.

The official said that in the past two years, Rudra contracted infectious diseases twice, and each time his body became weaker after recovery. Officials added that zoo veterinary staff had hand-raised him as Rudra did not receive adequate maternal milk due to his frail health.

“Since his immunity was low, he contracted infections regularly and the problem of his blindness also came back. In October, we carried out a blood test that showed that parasitic remains continued to stay in his blood. He was under veterinary supervision and he died just days before his birthday,” the official added.

At present, Karishma and Jay are the two surviving tigers in the zoo. The zoo authorities had brought Karishma and Shakti from the Sambhaji Nagar zoo in Maharashtra under an exchange programme. At the time, Karishma was three years old and Shakti was four. Two years later, the tiger couple gave birth to two cubs – Jay and Rudra.

Following the penguins, the tiger family had become a major crowd-puller for zoo visitors.