Bilaspur, Apr 5 (PTI) A tigress was killed in a fight with another big cat at a zoo in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district, an official said on Tuesday.

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The tigress named Cheri was found dead in her cell in the enclosure at Kanan Pendari Zoological Garden on Monday morning, and the autopsy report suggested that she died due to asphyxiation, the official said.

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The incident took place on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday, the zoo's superintendent Sanjay Luthar said.

A tiger named Bhairav and Cheri were housed in separate cells adjacent to each other. Prima facie, it appears that the tiger broke open the gate between the two cells and entered in the tigress' shelter causing a clash, he said.

Bhairav caught Cheri by her neck and killed her, the official said.

Cheri was brought to Kanan Pendari from a zoo in Maharashtra's Nagpur in 2011 as a part of an animal exchange programme, he said.

After being alerted about the incident, senior forest officials reached the zoo and the tigress was cremated following an autopsy, he added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)