Watch: Mother Fakes Tiger Attack Story To Avoid Gossip After Girl Elopes With Boyfriend

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

A viral video of a distraught mother weeping hysterically in a sugarcane field sent panic through a village in northern India's Sitapur district, about 90km from Lucknow, on Thursday.

The woman, Prema, claimed a tiger had leapt out of hiding and dragged away her 18-year-old daughter Kamini before her eyes. In the video, she can be seen crying uncontrollably, collapsing on the ground, and even fainting as villagers and police rushed to her aid. Kamini's slippers, found tossed near the fields, appeared to back up her story.

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The account triggered a massive search operation. Twenty-eight forest officials, eight policemen, two drones, cages, nets, and more than 550 villagers scoured 10km of farmland and forest for nearly 10 hours. But there was no tiger. And no Kamini.

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“Prima facie we have found that the story is totally fabricated. No tiger ever took her,” the PRO of the Sitapur Superintendent of Police told Khaleej Times over the phone.“She went on her own and the family cooked up the story to escape social shame. Her whereabouts is a separate matter as she is an adult. We have registered a case for spreading false alarm.”

Watch the below video from Sitapur supplied by Dainik Bhaskar:

Earlier, Senior Superintendent of Police Durgesh Kumar addressed a press conference, debunking the tiger attack and confirming that Kamini had left on her own. He urged residents not to spread rumours that could cause unnecessary fear.

Police suspicions had mounted when Prema and Kamini's sister gave conflicting accounts during questioning. Eventually, they admitted the truth: Kamini had run away with her boyfriend, Sunny, a young man from a neighbouring village. Reports in local media described how the family staged the attack to cover up her disappearance, even planting her slippers in the fields to mislead investigators.

Kamini's marriage had already been arranged for November, and her mother confessed she invented the tiger tale to deflect gossip in the village.

"Sitapur, known for its sugarcane fields and stretches of forest where tiger sightings are not uncommon, has seen its share of wildlife encounters," said Harpal, a resident. "But this time, the“tiger hunt” ended not in the jungle, but in a runaway love story."

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