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Tiger Vaults Into Fishing Boat In India, Yanks Man Out As His Helpless Children Watch

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A Bengal tiger bounded from a creek bank and sunk its teeth into a man on a fishing boat in eastern India.

The tiger then yanked the man off the boat and into a creek as his terrified children watched, reports The Times of India.

The incident happened around dawn on Thursday in the Sunderbans National Park.

The man, 62-year-old Sushil Majhi, is presumed dead. His body will likely go unrecovered.

Majhi was crab fishing in his stream with his two grown children — his son and his adopted daughter. Majhi was in the middle of the boat. The other two members of the fateful expedition sat at either end. A net was dragging behind.

“Shortly after we reached the spot, around 7 am, we got a whiff of a strange odor,” the victim’s 40-year-old son,  Jyotish, said, according to the Times. “We immediately decided to turn back to a safer zone.”

It was too late, though, as the tiger which had been stalking the boat and sprang suddenly from the bank of the creek.

“Suddenly, my sister cried out: ‘Dada, bagh (tiger),'” the bereaved son explained. “I was stunned, and my body froze. All I saw a flash of yellow. It took me a moment to register the gruesome sight before me. My father was completely buried under the beast. I could only see his legs thrashing about.”

Jyotish said he tried to beat off the tiger with a stick, but it was fruitless. The animal got away.

“We saw it disappear into the jungle with my father still in its jaws,” the son lamented, according to the Times.

A spokesman for the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve confirmed that other fisherman had witnessed the tragedy.

All fishing is banned in the area of the national park where the tiger snatched the man.

Majhi’s death marks the fourth time in 2014 alone that a tiger has killed a person in the national park.

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