DEEP inside the wilderness of Asia once roamed the deadliest man-eating tiger whose lust for human blood saw no limits.
This is the chilling tale of the Champawat tiger who devoured a record 436 people in Nepal and India some 130 years ago.
Dubbed “Demon”, the Champawat Tiger was a female Royal Bengal tiger – one of the biggest cat species in the world – that went on a rampant streak of stalking people and killing them for flesh.
The savage beast inflicted a seven-year reign of terror in rural areas of Nepal and India before it was finally shot dead by a lone Irish hunter called Jim Corbett.
Operating with “almost supernatural efficacy”, it began the attacks in the village of Rupal in western Nepal in the last few years of the 19th century.
Author Dane Huckelbridge described the beast as the “most prolific serial killer of human life the world had ever seen”.
The tiger mostly targeted young children and women who went into the forest to collect firewood and livestock – mauling them to death.
For many years, it attacked and killed at least one victim every week, leading to an overwhelming amount of deaths in the area.
However, Nepalese authorities were forced to do something to thwart the fatal attacks after the number of killings crossed 200.
In 1903, the local community along with army soldiers planned to bait the tiger in a bid to capture the beast and if lucky enough, kill it.
They put up hanging goats around the village to tempt the tiger and waited with sticks and machetes to launch an attack on the beast.
Despite being able to kill the tiger when it arrived, the army of men was able to flush the beast out and drive her across the border to India.
The Champawat Tiger quickly adapted to the new area and began its killing streak, claiming a further 236 lives in just a few years.
The lives of the local people soon became a living hell – young children and women were forced to stay inside all the time and men refused to go to work.
Huckelbridge writes in his book: “They had become veritable refugees in their own homes, stalked by a spectre that seemed able to kill them at will.
“The entire countryside was paralysed, as no one knew where or when the tiger might strike.”
The tiger became a master at hunting people and plotted unique strategies to escape.
It would travel great distances between villages and even go to new territories to evade death from the local people and hunters.
Despite many efforts from the government – who even put a bounty on the tiger – no one was able to slay the savage beast.
However, then came Jim Corbett – a skilled Irish marksman who was born and raised in India during the British Raj.
He went on to become one of the most celebrated tiger hunters, having killed 50 rogue beasts that had collectively killed some 2,000 people.
Corbett was given the task to wipe out the Champawat Tiger who managed to follow it using a trail of blood.
In 1907, just after the savage beast killed its final victim – a 16-year-old girl – the Irish hunter shot the tiger dead.
His first shots hit the tiger in the chest and shoulder, and his last shot, hit it in the foot, causing her to collapse.
The beast was only 6 metres away from Corbett when he fired the fatal shot.
A postmortem report showed the upper and lower canine teeth on the right side of the Chmpawat Tiger were broken as a result of an old injury.
Corbett suggested this injury was perhaps the reason that prevented the beast from hunting its natural prey – and attacked humans for flesh instead.
A lover of Indian wildlife, Corbett spent the last two decades of his life campaigning to protect the big cats.
He later helped to establish a protected area in Uttarakhand, India for wildlife animals, which was later named as the famous Jim Corbett National Park in his honour.
