Specialist hunters on elephants are tracking a tiger in northern India that may have killed as many as 10 people on a 150-mile journey through villages, fields and forests, during which it crossed rivers and six-lane motorways.
It is unclear whether another victim was killed nearby earlier in the week by the same animal or by a second man-eater.
Samir Sinha, the field director of the Corbett national park, told the Times of India that the attack had taken place shortly before noon on Sunday. The victim, a 45-year-old worker for a contractor with the irrigation department, had stopped his car and walked into the forest, probably to relieve himself.
"People rushed to his rescue on hearing his screams. But he was dead by the time they reached him," Sinha said.
India is home to more than half of the world's estimated 3,200 tigers, with most living in wildlife reserves set up since the 1970s. The natural habitat of the animals has almost disappeared outside reserves. Even inside designated zones, unchecked development of tourism and other industries has restricted space and food. Many end up foraging in areas with large human populations.
The man-eater – believed to be a four-year-old female called the Mysterious Queen by trackers – made its first confirmed human kill on 29 December at a village in Moradabad district, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Further attacks have followed at intervals of between two and 16 days.
Belinda Wright, of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, said that conflict between humans and animals was a "huge problem all over India", which lacked a "formal strategy to deal with the issue".
Last year India's supreme court imposed a temporary ban on tourism in the areas of national parks where tigers live. It was lifted after four months and vociferous protests from tour operators and guides.
Wright said an injury or a traumatic event could have prompted the tiger blamed for the most recent spate of killings to "go for a wander".
"Tigers do this. The first attack was in the middle of nowhere. No one has seen her and no one knows where she comes from. Once they become man-eaters they become invisible, very cunning, just like ghosts," Wright told the Guardian.
The tiger appears to have killed, but not eaten, her first three victims. One possibility may be that crowds gathering after the first attack panicked her, making her more aggressive.
Hunters said they had reconstructed parts of the tiger's journey.
"She moved through villages, towns and crossed no less than three national highways, four state highways and three railway crossings," said BC Brahama, a forestry official in Moradabad.
High growths of sugar cane, a common crop in the area, may have hidden the animal.
A new census of India's tiger population is currently under way. The most recent, in 2010, gave a figure of 1,706, a fraction of the 45,000 that roamed the country a century ago.
Around 40 tigers were killed by poachers in India last year – the highest number since 2005. Demand for their body parts for use in traditional medicine in China and elsewhere in east Asia remains robust. Leopards and rhinos are also targeted.