Bhubaneswar: After giving sleepless nights to the Odisha Forest Department personnel for nearly one month, Tigress Zeenat has been tranquilised finally.

PCCF (Wildlife) Prem Kuma Jha informed Zeenat was tranquilised by a joint team of the Odisha Forest Department and the West Bengal Forest Department this afternoon in a forest under Purulia district in the neighbouring State.

Jha further stated the three-year-old tigress has been kept in a special cage after tranquilisation and is being taken to the Alipur Zoo, Kolkata. She will kept under observation there. If her health condition is found to be perfect, the tigress will be brought back to Similipal by tomorrow evening, he added.

The Forest Department teams of both the States had been monitoring the movement of Zeenat round-the-clock after she satryed into the neighbouring state.

Since Saturday morning, she was roaming a crop field near a dam in Purulia district. After several efforts to dart her, the teams successfully tranquilised the tigress at 4 pm today. She is in a sedative mode now, Jha said.

Zeenat was translocated to Similipal in Odisha from the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) in Maharashtra on November 14. She was released into to the wild on November 25 following her brief stay at a soft enclosure at the Similipal Tiger Reserve. Zeenat later strayed into the deep forest cover of the neighbouring states of Jharkhand and West Bengal.

A few days after, another Tigress Jamuna, which was brought to Odisha from TATR under the translocation programme, also went out of Similipal. Jamuna strayed into the Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary in Balasore district.