IWN Report — Wednesday, 28 October 2026
A young cheetah has died of gunshot wounds in India’s Madhya Pradesh state, raising questions about how an animal that officials say is tracked around the clock came to be shot.
The cheetah, tagged KNG22, was a 19-month-old male found injured on 25 October and rescued the same day, according to a press note dated 27 October from the principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) and chief wildlife warden of Madhya Pradesh. He died early on 27 October. He was identified as one of the cubs of a cheetah named Nirva.
The monitoring team is under scrutiny. The Tribune reported that the cheetah was radio-collared, and activists asked what the tracking team was doing. In IWN’s 26 October report, the Project Cheetah director was quoted by Aaj Tak as saying that a tracking team stays with the cheetahs around the clock.
The latest statement says an initial X-ray showed multiple foreign bodies in his body, and he was moved to the Department of Veterinary Surgery and Radiology at NDVSU in Jabalpur. A CT scan there showed damage to the animal’s internal organs, musculoskeletal system and nervous system, and vets removed five firearm pellets during emergency surgery but could not save him. The state government has formed a Special Task Force of forest and police officers to investigate.
The statement puts the number of cheetahs in India at 58, with 52 in Kuno National Park, four in Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary and two in Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve.
Before the cheetah’s death, The Free Press Journal reported that forest officials were checking whether villagers had beaten him with sticks, whether someone had shot at him or whether a leopard had attacked him, and that a gang had allegedly poached two leopards in the same Morena area a few months earlier. IWN has not been able to establish whether an activist’s unconfirmed claim of villagers beating a cheetah near Kuno concerns this animal.
Sources: Madhya Pradesh Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), press note dated 27 October 2026 (supplied to IWN; no web link available) · Cheetah Project, Madhya Pradesh, press note dated 26 October 2026 (supplied to IWN; no web link available) · The Tribune · The Free Press Journal · Aaj Tak