Navin Raheja holds screening of documentary on tiger ‘Ustad’

Ranthambore National Park has fallen short of another tiger. ‘Ustad’  the tiger has been shifted from the national park to a zoo in Udaipur. Ustad has been held responsible for the recent killing of a forest guard who was on routine patrol. This makes the toll of killings by Ustad reach a gruesome count of 4. This made the forest officials term the tiger as a man-eater. On this account, he was shifted to the zoo.

Navin Raheja, a wildlife enthusiast from raheja developers, recently held the screening of a documentary which covered the journey of Ustad from being shifted from Ranthambore to settling in the cage of the zoo. Present at the screening were acclaimed actor and eminent stage artist Sir Tom Alter and award winning film director Neela Madhab Panda. Joining them were Navin Raheja and the director of the documentary on Ustad, Asif Khan.

Navin Raheja said, “ The other tigers have taken over Ustad’s territory and his family has been displaced. It is unfortunate that we humans had a knee-jerk reaction to the killing incident and insisted on putting Ustad in a cage. Now there is a committee that wants to bring him back to the jungle. But this needs to be done soon or else Ustad will lose his wildlife instincts over a period time in zoo.”

The documentary, directed by Asif Khan, captured all the moments of the shifting. They vividly captured Ustad in the natural demeanor. Tom Alter took to the stage to appreciate Asif’s work and talked about how difficult it usually is to make a documentary. Navin Raheja had also invited two forest officials from Ranthambore, Raees Khan and Mohan Singh to the event. The officials told that while most of Ustad’s family is being kept safe, Sultan, Ustad’s eldest cub has been chased away by other male tigers.