Kolkata, June 2 (IANS) One villager was killed and another injured when they were attacked by a tiger in Ajmalmari forest area of the Sundarbans in West Bengal, forest department officials said here Monday. “A group of four fishermen from Deulbari village entered the forest area of the Sundarbans Sunday evening where they were attacked by a tiger. The tiger dragged one person, Tapan Mukherjee, inside the forest and left his father Pashupati Mukherjee, severely injured on the spot,” South 24-Parganas Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Subhendu Banerjee told IANS.

“Pashupati was later shifted to the SSKM hospital in Kolkata for treatment. When we went to Deulbari village and asked two other members of the fishing team to visit the spot with the forest department team, they refused to accompany us,” Banerjee said, adding that the villagers were in a state of shock and in no condition to visit the area again.

“None of them had taken permission from the forest department to enter into the core forest belt. We would file a case against them for entering the forest area without proper papers,” he said.

The Sundarbans, a vast 10,000 sq km tract of forest and saltwater swamp, is formed at the lower part of the Ganga delta extending about 260 km along the Bay of Bengal from the Hooghly river estuary in India to the Meghna river estuary in Bangladesh.

The Sundarbans, a world heritage site declared by Unesco, is home to more than 250 tigers.