Vadodara: While a school teacher may have been the only one to provide photographic evidence of the existence of a tiger in the Sant Matro jungles of Santrampur taluka, the drivers and conductors of state transport (ST) buses that ply on the Godhra-Panam Dam route had spotted the tiger over the last couple of months.Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) buses ply at regular intervals on the route. The route passes through the area where the tiger has been moving around. One of the drivers spotted the tiger in the last week of January while others have spotted it earlier.Maksud Tekravala, a driver, said, “I saw the tiger standing on the road in the light of my bus in the night. This was either on January 28 or January 30 when I was on duty on the route. People had been telling us about its presence, but it was for the first time that I saw it.”Udesinh Baria, a conductor who plies on the same route, said he had seen the tiger about two months back near Gadh village. “It stood on the side of the road for a few minutes and then walked into the trees. The passengers in the bus also saw it. There are other drivers and conductors too who have seen the tiger,” said Baria.Another bus driver Rafiq Peerzada said that he too saw the tiger near Gadh in the morning about a month back. “The tiger was crossing the road. A man who was riding a motorcycle had also seen the tiger and had stopped on the road,” he said.The bus crew members hold that the animal was distinctly different from a leopard and was a definitely a tiger. It seems to have sneaked into the jungles from the road on seeing the buses coming close.

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