Villagers say there’s a rogue man-eater in their jungle. It has a taste for right legs

The search party went at dusk on battered trail bikes, inching up narrow jungle paths and steep ridges towards the small coffee farms carved over generations from the wild highlands of southern Sumatra.

They were a handful of men, friends and neighbours of Karim Yulianto, a father and husband who hadn’t come home. Slung over their shoulders were tubular, homemade “sound guns”. Machetes, should it come to that, were sheathed on their waists.

Arriving at Karim’s one-hectare plot, they found spattered blood. Nearby were the missing man’s shoes and ripped pants. When they found his machete, they noted it was flecked with woodchips, meaning he’d been pruning, his back exposed.

Villager Rochmat, who goes by one name, displays the paw prints of a suspected serial killer. Credit: Amilia Rosa

With this evidence, the men called for reinforcements. By nightfall, almost 60 people had joined them.

In the village of Kalibata Atas, on the western side of Indonesia’s Lampung Province, Karim’s wife Supami Ningsih was growing anxious. It was unusual for her husband to be home any later than 2.30pm, let alone after dark.

It couldn’t have been a road accident – a farmer friend had spotted his motorbike still at the plot. Perhaps he had fallen ill, she thought. After all, Supami was sick herself. Normally, she’d go up with her husband. But on September 21, 2024, Karim had gone alone.

When she was informed of the search party’s initial discoveries, she knew she was getting bad news.

About 9pm, one of the searchers yelled out to his fellows. He had found Karim. The mangled body was so well covered by twigs and leaves the man had actually stepped on it.

Supami Ningsih’s husband Karim is believed to have been killed by a tiger.Credit: Amilia Rosa

Rushing over, the friends discovered Karim’s right leg missing and the back of his neck punctured with bites.

From deeper in the jungle rolled the low, unmistakable growl of a Sumatran tiger.

Karim, 46, was victim number four.

‘I thought he’d had an accident’

Villagers in the Suoh region of Lampung have no recent memory of the critically endangered tigers attacking humans. This changed in February last year, when a man named Gunarso was found dead at his newly purchased coffee plot, only a kilometre from the family’s home in Sumber Agung.

The village was rattled. No one knew how to tell his wife Juminem how he had died. Only at the wake did she overhear people talking. “Until then, I thought he’d had an accident,” she says.

From no deaths in years, there have now been seven in Suoh and bordering districts in the past 18 months. The furthest distance between any two fatalities is about 20 kilometres. Some have been only kilometres apart.

Juminem and family, with a picture of her dead husband Gunarso. Credit: Amilia Rosa

The most recent killing was on August 7, a man named Ujang Samsudin.

Villagers believe it’s a single tiger responsible. A bona fide maneater. They base this on the fact identical paw prints were discovered near bodies.

There is another, less scientific reason: All the victims were missing their right legs. Was this the tiger’s favourite part, its calling card?

Park authorities set up two traps in the area near Karim’s coffee plot, baiting one with a goat, the other with a donated pet dog.

“Yes, it would be sad to lose someone’s pet,” Kalibata Atas village head Jawahir, who goes by one name, says. “But it’s sadder to lose a person.”

Both animals made it home alive. Unfortunately for the goat, it was promptly slaughtered for a feast.

Until there is DNA testing of gathered hair and faeces, which apparently no organisation or government department can afford, it is impossible to know for sure whether a sole maneater is on the loose or if several tigers have simultaneously decided to start hunting humans.

Both alternatives are terrifying.

Veterinarian Erni Suyanti Musabine, who has worked with Sumatran tigers for years, is also a member of HarimauKita, a community organisation set up in 2008 to help conserve the tigers.

Based on patterns of behaviour and a tiger’s ability to cover the distance between the eight reported attacks in and around Suoh, she tentatively subscribes to the one-tiger theory.

An injured Sumatran tiger captured in 2019 and placed in Bandar Lampung zoo. Credit: Amilia Rosa

“Tiger attacks can happen for several reasons, such as a human being in their territory. But we have eight attacks towards humans, and seven were followed by consumption,” she says.

“The one survivor was likely not attacked to be eaten. Firstly, he was attacked from the front and was not alone. Tigers attack after lying in wait. They don’t confront.”

Juminem points to the spot her husband was killed, only a kilometre from their home. Credit: Amilia Rosa

In February last year, the suspected killer tiger was caught on a jungle camera near the second fatality. Erni and others noticed that its features were strikingly similar to a male tiger photographed in a neighbouring region in 2017. It was already an adult back then. Now, it would be getting elderly, possibly choosing to hunt humans because they were easier to catch than wild deer or boar.

Erni theorises that the tiger moved into the Suoh region some time after 2017 because there were too many males in its old hunting grounds.

“The paw size can indicate that it’s one individual, but we didn’t find paw prints at all the attack sites,” she says. “We collected faeces and hair from the last two attacks. That could genetically provide hard evidence that the attacks are by the same individual.”

Heeding warnings from experts like Erni, the coffee growers have changed the way they work. Before February last year, they would usually go to their plots alone. Now they travel in groups, working together on one family’s farm one day, another farm the next and so on.

After 100 days of mourning, Karim’s widow, Supami, went back to their small plot accompanied by about 25 villagers. It was a show of solidarity and safety – but also, the overgrown plantation needed many hands.

Villagers preparing a feast in Indonesia’s Lampung province. Credit: Amilia Rosa

“I was scared. I was sick. I was sad,” she says. “But someone needed to tend to the coffee farm.”

Supami doesn’t go up there any more. She has hired someone instead, splitting the meagre profits 50-50.

Despite her grief, she doesn’t want the tiger harmed. “I just want that one tiger captured and removed from the area,” she says.

This is a common refrain in the villages. Killing the tigers is not an option anyway. Hariyo T. Wibisono, director of conservation foundation Sintas Indonesia, estimates there are only 350 Sumatran tigers left in the wild. The breed has been victim of poaching and habitat loss due to illegal logging.

The island of Java once had its own species of tiger. So did Bali. Both are extinct. Indonesia and the world cannot afford the Sumatrans to go the same way.

The tiger whisperer

Some people in his village think Samanan is a Pawang Harimau – the possessor of an otherworldly tiger-human mind meld. A tiger whisperer, of sorts.

The reason is that Samanan, born in 1983 but unsure of his birthday, is the only person to have survived the recent spate of attacks.

Samanan and his daughters at their small shack home. Credit: Amilia Rosa

There have been other close encounters. In one of them, a man on his trail bike supposedly came face to face with a tiger and braked before they hit. According to villagers, the man brought his hands together in prayer and said: “Please, I beg your forgiveness. I am human. Please go.”

And it did.

But only Samanan has the scars. The biggest runs from the back of his head to his forehead.

He occupies a three-quarter-hectare coffee plot that he bought from his brother for 150 kilograms of rice. Like dozens of others from these tropical villages, he is technically farming illegally because it is inside the borders of the South Bukit Barisan National Park.

Authorities turn a blind eye. Villagers have been farming up there for generations. They say no new plots have been cut from the park in years, if not decades – long before the first attack. And if they weren’t allowed to grow coffee in the park, how then to feed their families?

Samanan says he has harvested 250 kilograms of coffee this year. At the current low prices, the haul is not even worth the equivalent of $1500.

Samanan’s injuries after he was attacked by a tiger.

The landscape, about eight hours by car from the provincial capital of Bandar Lampung, is stunning, like a location set for Jurassic Park. And as in the movies, the park can be deadly. All but one of the seven deaths happened in its boundaries.

On the morning of March 11 last year, Samanan and a friend rode the three-kilometre, 30-minute journey to his plot to spray weeds. Having finished by about 2pm, he planted some cucumber seeds and set about pruning weak branches from his coffee.

“I didn’t see or hear it coming. It was from the front, but I was occupied on the branches,” he says.

He demonstrates how he put up his forearms to protect himself as the snarling tiger tried to bite his face. It had already dragged its sharp claws across his head, creating the long cut.

Screaming “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), he pushed the animal off. Miraculously, it ran.

“I unsheathed my machete and chased it. After about 50 metres it was where my colleague was standing. He was stunned. He didn’t know what to do. But when the tiger [ran in the other direction], I stopped running.”

Samanan in hospital.

Blinded by the blood and seriously injured, Samanan had the presence of mind to bury his weed spray so no one could steal it. Then, he got on the back of his friend’s bike and they rode home.

He spent four days in hospital and recovered at home for another 15. On the 20th day, he went back to work. The friend, however, chose never to return.

“I take my wife now,” he says. “I’m too scared to go up there alone. There were two times when I went alone, and she yelled at me, ‘you are not allowed to do that!’.

“Definitely I am not a Pawang. I do not have such abilities. It’s God that wanted me alive.”

A group of farmers agreed to take this masthead up to one of the coffee plots as part of a convoy. However, when word of this reached authorities, police and military showed up and shut the mission down. The reasons they gave were related to safety and the official paperwork needed to go into the national park.

This masthead was told that later that day, more than 20 officials arrived at one of the villages asking about the questions and reporting.

Indonesia’s BKDSA, the agency with overarching responsibility for animal conservation, declined an interview with this masthead a month after the request was made. It instead referred questions to the management of the national park. The park then requested a letter. At the time of publication, it had not responded.

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