BHOPAL: A 19-month-old male cheetah cub from Kuno National Park has died from firearm pellet injuries in Madhya Pradesh, in what officials describe as the first killing of a cheetah by gunfire in India since the species was reintroduced to the country in 2022.
The cub, identified as KNG22 and born to a female cheetah named Nirva last year, died early on Tuesday, three days after it was rescued with severe injuries. It had been found by a forest monitoring team on Sunday evening in the Pahargarh range of the Morena territorial forest division, outside the protected boundaries of Kuno National Park, and was shifted to Jabalpur for advanced veterinary treatment.
Madhya Pradesh Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) and Chief Wildlife Warden Sameeta Rajoura said a CT scan revealed that foreign bodies had damaged the animal's internal organs, musculoskeletal system and nervous system. "Emergency surgery was performed, during which five firearm pellets were recovered from its body. Despite the intervention and sustained efforts by the veterinary team, the cheetah could not be saved," she said in a statement.
The death has cast a shadow over Project Cheetah, the ambitious programme launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2022 to bring the world's fastest land animal back to India, nearly 75 years after it was declared extinct in the country.
Eight cheetahs were flown in from Namibia in the first batch, followed by 12 more from South Africa, and the animals have since bred at Kuno National Park in Sheopur district, producing a new generation of India-born cubs, including KNG22.
Officials said the cub was first found injured in compartment number 748 of the Sheopur territorial forest division, in a forested belt bordering Sheopur and Morena districts. An initial X-ray revealed multiple foreign bodies at different locations inside its body, and treatment was begun immediately.
After expert consultation, the animal was moved to the department of veterinary surgery and radiology at the Nanaji Deshmukh Veterinary Science University in Jabalpur, where doctors repeatedly found evidence of a gunshot injury and removed pellets during surgery.
A doctor at the veterinary university, speaking on condition of anonymity, told one newspaper that the cheetah appeared to have been shot at close range. Three or four metal pellets had initially been detected inside the cub's abdominal cavity, and investigators are now examining the nature of the weapon used and the circumstances in which the animal was shot.
With KNG22's death, India's cheetah population now stands at 58, according to the state forest department. Of these, 52 are in Kuno National Park, four are in the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, and two are in the Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve, all in Madhya Pradesh. The figure underlines how concentrated the reintroduced population remains, with almost the entire national population dependent on a single landscape in central India.
The state government has constituted a special task force comprising forest and police officers to conduct a detailed investigation, Rajoura said. The Special Tiger Strike Force, a specialised wildlife protection unit, has also been deployed in the area, and the forest department is seeking assistance from the state police's Special Task Force to identify those responsible.
Officials have described the incident as unprecedented in the modern history of the project, and have raised suspicions of poaching, though the investigation is still at an early stage and no arrests have been announced.
The Union government has also stepped in. The environment ministry said it had ordered a high-level team for an on-ground investigation, treating the incident with "utmost gravity". The Central team comprises the Inspector General of Forests from the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the Additional Director of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, and the bureau's Regional Deputy Director.
The team has been tasked with undertaking a thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to the cheetah's death, examining all available evidence and coordinating closely with the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department to ensure strict and swift action.
The incident has also raised uncomfortable questions about monitoring. Kuno National Park director Uttam Kumar Sharma declined to comment on how the cheetah had managed to stray far from the park and why monitoring teams were unable to intervene earlier. "This incident did not take place in my jurisdiction. It would have been our responsibility had the incident taken place at Kuno National Park," he told one newspaper.
The remark has drawn attention to the challenge of protecting wide-ranging animals that regularly move beyond the boundaries of protected areas into territorial forests and farmland, where they are far more vulnerable to conflict with people.
Conservationists have long warned that this is the central risk of the reintroduction effort. Cheetahs are coursing predators that range over large territories, and young animals in particular are known to disperse over long distances in search of their own ranges.
When they leave the safety of the park, they can encounter snares, firearms and hostile villagers, especially in landscapes where people are unaccustomed to living alongside a large predator that had been absent for generations. The fact that KNG22 was found injured in a territorial forest division, rather than inside the park, illustrates precisely that vulnerability.
The history of the cheetah in India makes the loss particularly poignant. The Asiatic cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952, after decades of hunting and habitat loss. The last three Asiatic cheetahs in the wild were famously hunted down in 1947 by Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Koriya, in what is now Chhattisgarh.
The African cheetahs brought to Kuno belong to a different subspecies, but the project has always carried enormous symbolic weight: it is an attempt to undo an extinction, and it has been championed personally by the Prime Minister as a signature conservation initiative.
That symbolism is also why the project has attracted such close scrutiny. Every death at Kuno has been reported and debated, and experts in animal reintroduction caution that high mortality is common in the initial phases of such programmes, with some projects losing more than half their animals in the early years. Supporters of Project Cheetah argue that the breeding success at Kuno, where India-born cubs like KNG22 are now being born, shows the project is working.
Critics, however, say the latest death exposes gaps in protection once animals leave the park, and they want stronger safeguards, better tracking and faster intervention when a cheetah wanders into human-dominated landscapes.
The investigation now under way will be crucial on two counts. First, it must establish who shot the animal and why, whether it was a deliberate act of poaching, a case of mistaken identity during hunting of other animals, or a retaliatory killing by someone who felt threatened. Second, it must answer the management question: what changes are needed so that dispersing cheetahs are not left unprotected in the forests and fields around Kuno.
The answers will shape not only the future of the remaining 58 animals, but also the credibility of one of India's most high-profile conservation experiments.
For the moment, the forest department's message is one of resolve. Officials have promised strict and swift action, and the Centre's decision to send a high-level team signals that the case is being taken seriously at the highest levels.
But for a project that began with such fanfare in September 2022, the death of a 19-month-old cub to gunfire is a sobering reminder of how fragile a reintroduction can be, and how much still depends on the willingness of people living around Kuno to accept the return of the cheetah.
(Reporting based on The Indian Express, Deccan Chronicle and Mathrubhumi.)