Zoo visitor found dead after staff see tiger ‘holding a shoe in its mouth’

A half-chewed on corpse was discovered inside a tiger’s cage at a zoo after a visitor jumped in, it was reported.

Staff spotted a mauled shoe in the mouth of one of the four big cats living in the enclosure at Bahawalpur’s Sherbagh Zoo, in the province of Punjab, in Pakistan.

The remains were finally located on Wednesday morning and the zoo was forced to close.

‘When they cleaned the zoo and the dens, they found the (animal) holding a shoe in its mouth,’ Zaheer Anwar, a senior government official in Bahawalpur, told the media.

‘The staff got suspicious and then they found a body inside the den.’

Mr Anwar described the big cat using a word that in Pakistan can mean tiger or leopard, and both are believed to be housed inside the zoo.

‘Our assessment so far is that this appears to be a lunatic, because a sensible person would not jump into the den,’ he said.

‘You can see that the den is secured. There are stairs behind the den, maybe he jumped from there. (The) staff are all accounted for.’

According to Samaa TV, the condition of the body was so bad that the man had to be identified by his fingerprints.

It also suggests that the victim was mauled to death by tigers late Tuesday night.

Zafarullah, an official of the rescue service 1122 in Bahawalpur, said his legs had been heavily mauled.

‘It is yet not known who he is and how he got there. It is being investigated. The body looked several hours old,’ said Zafarullah, who goes by one name.

He added that forensic experts were examining the body.

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