What happened
A video purporting to show a tigress with two cubs near a bamboo grove along the Kansari River, close to Kumbhirapada village under the Balugaon Wildlife Division, sent Khordha district residents into genuine panic — school runs and evening walks paused pending an official verdict on the cat. The Odisha forest department deployed surveillance and combed the area but found no pugmarks, scat, or any other physical evidence of a tiger, leaving the sighting formally unconfirmed. Villagers, who maintain they saw exactly what they saw, are now living somewhere between a nature documentary and a bureaucratic waiting room: the tiger is simultaneously not confirmed to exist and not confirmed not to.