Raipur: A villager was recently killed in a tiger attack in neighbouring Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, close to the Chhattisgarh border, triggering concern across forest-fringe villages of Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki and Kanker districts.The attack was reported from Dolenda village in the Jarawandi area of Gadchiroli. The man had gone towards the forest on Wednesday morning when he was attacked by a tiger and died at the spot.The incident has prompted forest authorities on the Chhattisgarh side to step up surveillance in the border belt, where tiger movement has been reported intermittently in recent days.Villages in the Aundhi, Mohla-Manpur and Pakhanjur belts are particularly alert because the forest landscape extends across district and state boundaries, allowing large carnivores to move through a relatively continuous habitat.Forest officials have asked residents not to enter wooded areas alone and to immediately report any fresh sighting, pugmarks or other signs of tiger movement.The latest attack has also raised a key question for wildlife officials: whether the animal involved is the same tiger that has recently been moving through forests around Aundhi and adjoining parts of Chhattisgarh, or a different animal ranging on the Maharashtra side.Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki officials said that tigers moving through the Aundhi region have come into proximity with people on earlier occasions but have not attacked humans so far.Forest teams have nevertheless been placed on heightened alert and are continuing to monitor movement in sensitive stretches along the border. Officials are expected to rely on field signs, camera-trap inputs and movement patterns to determine whether there is any overlap between the tiger seen in Chhattisgarh and the animal involved in the Gadchiroli fatality.The death has had an immediate effect on daily life in the border villages, with residents reluctant to venture into forests that many depend on for grazing, fuelwood and other routine needs.For the forest department, the challenge is now twofold: establishing the identity and movement of the tiger involved in the attack, while preventing panic in a landscape where tiger presence has become increasingly visible across administrative boundaries