Cheetah Tejas died as he could not recover from traumatic shock post-violent fight: Post-mortem report

Bhopal, July 12

A day after male cheetah Tejas died in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP), the post-mortem report revealed that the feline was “internally weak” and was unable to recover from a “traumatic shock” after a violent fight with a female cheetah, a forest official said on Wednesday.

Tejas, who was the seventh cheetah to die in four months at the KNP, was brought from South Africa in February this year and was about five-and-a-half years old. The cheetah died in the park on Tuesday, the official said.

The cheetah weighed around 43 kilograms, which is less than the weight of normal male cheetahs and his internal body parts were not functioning properly. The chances of his turning healthy in such a situation were quite less, the report said.

Possibly because of being internally weak, Tejas was unable to recover from the trauma after the violent clash with a female cheetah, it said.

“Prima facie, the cause of the death is traumatic shock,” the report said, adding the samples of Tejas’s internal body parts were sent to the Jabalpur-based School of Wildlife Forensic and Health for further examination.

The death of Tejas is yet another blow to the central government’s cheetah reintroduction programme launched with much fanfare in September last year.