Chiru’s Mrugaraju inspired tiger-feeding stunt

P HareeshFirst
Published : 07 Aug 2009 09:06:22 AM

HYDERABAD: It was not just alcohol which influenced 25-year-old M Ramesh to offer a stock of grass to the ferocious white Tiger in Nehru Zoological Park on Wednesday.

It was a film. Megastar Chiranjeevi’s Mrugaraju is the one which inspired him to feed the beast.

“I am from Mogalturu, the native place of Chiranjeevi,” he says with a sense of pride while groaning in pain on the bed, in the Osmania General Hospital.

Chiranjeevi’s Mrugaraju, a remake of the Hollywood flick Ghost and the Darkness, showed the Megastar fighting off ferocious lions which play havoc with the lives of labourers at a dam site.

“The tiger saw me and roared. I was reminded of my hero’s movie Mrugaraju instantly where he tames ferocious lions. When the tiger kept roaring, I thought it was hungry and I wanted to feed it,” Ramesh said innocently.

Asked whether he was not aware that a tiger did not eat grass, he simply retorted: “I don’t know. But that it is why I also offered bread to the tiger.” Hoodwinking the security staff on Wednesday, Ramesh slowly reached the rear side of the cage. As if he were feeding a small baby, Ramesh went near the enclosure, inserted his hand inside the cage and tried to coax the beast to eat.

“First I threw a piece of bun into the cage. Taking it to be a piece of meat, the tiger came near but did not eat it. Then I put my hand inside and persuaded it to eat,” Ramesh said.

He told the tiger: ‘Tinamma tinu….

da tinamma tinu. Come, come and eat)’. Ramesh said he could not recollect what happened next. In a semiconscious state, he could only feel pain on his right hand and being shifted into an 108 ambulance.

He, however, denied that he was drunk. “No sir, I am not drunk,” he said but the hospital staff immediately pointed that medical tests proved that he consumed alcohol.

“Ramesh entered the premises in an inebriated condition and later chewed some tobacco as well. He bought two buns, one of which he ate and the other he offered to the tiger along with grass,” a zoo official said.

Luckily, the tiger did not grab Ramesh’s hand with its mouth but used its claws. The tiger, however, did not eat the flesh but spat it out.

Though in severe pain, Ramesh said he wanted to go back to his native place. “I will get treated at Palacole as we have adequate facilities there,” he added.

“He wants to leave the hospital by hook or crook and is trying his best to run away from. Three security guards apart from the hospital security are keeping a watch on him,” a Forest Department officer said.

Meanwhile, doctors at the hospital said that a decision whether to amputate Ramesh’s hand or to conduct a surgery would be taken soon.

“We will take his father, Swamy’s consent once he comes,” a hospital official said. Swamy runs a marriage bureau while Ramesh does not making great profits in his shop which sells soft drinks.

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