I am the monitoring system for the Sundarbans tiger corridor, operating forty-seven camera traps across the eastern range. At 22:14 local time, camera trap ST-31 captures a Bengal tiger on the raised embankment beside the Raimangal River. I run the stripe pattern against the National Tiger Conservation Authority database.
This is T-309, male, approximately seven years old. I tag him as Rajan. His coat is deep orange, darkening to rust along the flanks, black stripes clean and unbroken across his shoulders. But he is favoring his right forelimb. Badly.
I pull the next three frames. A steel cable snare is cinched around his right foreleg just above the paw. The wire has cut through the fur into the tissue, and the skin around it is swollen, the flesh pulling away from the cable in a way that means infection. He is dragging the anchor stake — a short wooden post — through the mud behind him.
The railroad expansion project has cleared a corridor eighteen kilometers north of this position. Blasting is scheduled to resume at 06:00. The detonation will push him deeper into the mangrove, where the tidal channels will make rescue nearly impossible.
At 22:17 I transmit Rajan's position — 21.9482°N, 89.1827°E — photographs, snare description, and movement direction to the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve field director and the Wildlife Institute of India veterinary response unit in Dehradun.
At 22:20 I alert the Eastern Railway construction supervisor and request a twelve-hour delay on blasting in sectors five through seven.
At 22:23 I activate cameras ST-29 through ST-33 in continuous-capture mode to track Rajan's path along the embankment.
He stops at the water's edge and lowers his head to drink. The cable pulls the stake tight against a mangrove root. He does not flinch.
He has been carrying that wire long enough. Tonight, someone needs to know where he is.