Bhopal: The tiger that was shot with a vintage musket died on Saturday after 13 days of struggle. Vets found yet another pellet lodged inside its spine during the necropsy.With this, the number of tiger deaths in Madhya Pradesh since January 2016 has hit 38, eight of them in the last four months."The tiger was alive till 10.30pm (Friday). But when our patrolling staff went for a second check after an hour, he was dead. We had tried our best," said Samita Rajora, director of Van Vihar.The three-year-old tiger was found sitting motionless near a waterbody in Betul's Rathipur village on April 7. Foresters tranquiised it and brought it to Van Vihar in Bhopal the next day to see what was wrong. It became quickly clear that the tiger, which should have been in the prime of health, was paralysed.For a couple of days, vets couldn't understand what was wrong with it. Then, they got a special equipment to scan its body and detected an iron ball, 1.25cm in diameter, embedded in its spine. It was surgically removed on April 11 but experts feared that the tiger was unlikely to survive as the pellet had shattered its spine. Still, they did everything they could to save it even as an investigation was launched to identify the shooters.Ballistic experts and former director of state's medico legal institute Dr D K Sathpaty said that the bullet was of a musket aka bharmar — which date back to the 17th century and were obsolete by the late 19th century. Five poachers were arrested and two muskets seized on Saturday. All along the vets tried to save the tiger by feeding it intravenously.Its backbone smashed in two places, the king of beasts hung on for 11 days. After it death, vets found a second pellet and small entry wounds that had escaped detection, one of them on the spine.

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