‘Tiger widows' shunned as bad luck in Bangladesh

Shyamnagar, February 21

Abandoned by her sons, shunned by her neighbours and branded a witch. Mosammat Rashida's crime? Her husband was killed by a Bengal tiger. Women like her are ostracised in many rural villages in Bangladesh, where they are viewed as the cause of their partner's misfortune.

"My sons have told me that I am an unlucky witch," she told AFP in her flimsy plank home, in the honey-hunters' village of Gabura at the edge of the Sundarbans -- a 10,000-square-kilometre (3,860-square-mile) mangrove forest that straddles Bangladesh and India. Her husband died while out collecting honey in the jungles there.

"Honey-hunters prefer to collect honey mostly in the southwestern Sundarbans, where most of the man-eaters (tigers) live," leading Bengal tiger expert at Jahangirnagar University, Monirul Khan, told AFP. Wildlife charities estimate there are some 100 tigers in the Bangladesh side of the Sundarbans. At least 519 men died from tiger attacks in 50 villages in one district -- home to half a million people -- between 2001 and 2011, according to Ledars Bangladesh, a charity helping widows. — AFP