There is a lot of controversy regarding the events that were thought to be caused by Ustad the tiger. Ustad, also known as T-24, once roamed in a 40 sq.km territory in Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan. Ustad was accused of killing a forest guard, Rampal Saini on May 8, 2015, and was also accused of two other killings.

It all started at 5 pm on that unfateful day when Saini’s wife had gone into the tiger’s territory to illegally collect firewood and grass. When she saw the tiger she dropped her load and ran to her husband. Saini then ignored his fellow guard's warnings and ventured more than 500 meters into the forest, which was a violation of the NTCA’s rules, with nothing but a stick with him for defense. He was then attacked and killed by an animal at 5:30 pm.

There is a lot of speculation that it could have been Sultan, Ustad’s son, who shares the same territory. There were also no eyewitnesses that saw the killing. After a couple of hours, Ustad was spotted sniffing the bloody body of Rampal Saini, as tigers are known to do, and was branded a man-eater. Ustad was then taken away from his wife and children and was put in isolation in Sajjangarh zoo.

After that, a serious of events followed, which indicated that the conviction of Ustad was more the fault of humans than the tiger himself. After the post-mortem it was declared that the death by a bite of an animal with a ‘long, canine tooth’, implicating that it could have been either a tiger, leopard, a bear, or a hyena ( all of whom were found in the reserve).

On June 2, another report showed that the Rajasthan forest department reacted harshly and that they did not follow standard guidelines. It had also been stated that the victims were deep in Tiger territory and the humans were at fault for trespassing.

Another factor that proves that It was the human's fault was that there were at least 38 hotels and resorts that were in violation of maintaining a 500-meter buffer zone. Many claims that the reason for this was so that the hotels could lure the Tigers closer and giving the tourists a ‘premium’ experience of seeing the tiger up close. There have also been cases where a tiger has climbed over the walls to be fed in front of gawking tourists. There are also some claims that there might be a political reason to all this, as proper investigations would have meant that the opportunities for tourism would have diminished, resulting in the loss of crores of rupees.

The truth is that Ustad was not a man-eater as a man-eating tiger will continue to prowl and selectively kill only humans, which was not the case of Ustad as he had never been accused of attacking even a single pilgrim. Tourism had failed the tiger and had falsely accused him and had condemned him to live in solitude.