In a shocking replay of the skinning of one-year-old tigress Sakhi, a three-and-a-half-year-old tigress was killed and her claws removed inside the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve Project, in the dense Nallamala forests on Monday by unidentified poachers.

On the same day a leopard was also killed and skinned near Mahanandi in the same district. Villagers said the poachers may have killed the tigress after using a noose-like trap to catch her. Sources said local poachers may have laid a trap for deer, but trapped a tiger instead which died due to strangulation while others say tiger poachers may have skinned the animal.

The carcass of the tiger was found in the Gosaikatta tank near Nagaluti village of the Bairluti forest range by tribals who informed forest officials on Tuesday. They brought the tiger to the Bairluti forest guesthouse for a postmortem on Wednesday.

Forest officials who arrested nearly 18 known poachers in the area following the killing said the tigress weighed well over 150 kg, was 2.36 metres in length and stood three feet high. There are an estimated 55 tigers in the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve Project which covers five districts Kurnool, Mahbubnagar, Prakasam, Guntur and Nalgonda along both sides of the Krishna river, beginning from the Srisailam reservoir backwaters and ending at the Nagarjunasagar reservoir.

Monday's incident was not the first in the tiger reserve as several killings have gone unnoticed since a census of tigers in the sanctuary began in 1992 when the tiger population was believed to be 93. In 1994 the number reduced to 31 and in 1998, officials said there were only 39 tigers in the sanctuary.

In 1999, census officials, however, raised the figure to 55 – the bungling of numbers showing the lack of interest taken by the Tiger Reserve officials.