NEW DELHI, May 19  -- A red alert has been sounded across 36 villages in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh as a tiger is on the prowl after killing a man, forest officials said Saturday.

The alert applied to villages of Raisen district, adjacent to Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh.

"A red alert was sounded on Friday for 36 villages spreading over 150 square km. People have been asked not to venture into the forests till the animal is captured," senior forest department official Vijay Kumar was quoted in local media as having said.

According to forest officials, the half-eaten body of a 62-year-old man was found on Wednesday in the east range of the Raisen forest division. He was attacked while picking tendu leaves in the forest.

The attack has triggered panic in the villages as the killer tiger is roaming and changing its location frequently.

Officials said three teams of experts have placed over 100 cameras in and around these 36 villages to trace the big cat and monitor its movement.

Forest department officials suspected the tiger might have ventured out of Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary in the Obaidullahganj forest division of Raisen.

Madhya Pradesh is home to 785 tigers as per the latest count released in 2023.

Wildlife experts say mass urbanization, denudation of forests, encroachment of forestland, vanishing of buffer zones in the forests are some of the reasons that push wild animals into residential areas.

Every year many people get killed or injured in the growing man-animal conflict across India.