The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Authorities found the mutilated bodies of two cubs born to the cheetah Nirva in Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park on November 28, around three days after they were born.
In a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on November 28, the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department announced the death of the two cubs. The post said that after female cheetah Nirva left her den site, a team led by wildlife veterinarians and the cheetah monitoring team inspected the den. They found the mutilated bodies of the two cheetah cubs.
The forest department said that while they inspected the boma where Nirva resided, they found no other bodies of cubs. Samples taken from the bodies of both cubs have been sent for detailed analysis, as per the post. However, the female cheetah is healthy, it said.
On November 25, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav had announced on X that cubs have been born to cheetah Nirva, and that officials of the forest department would soon confirm their number.
With the birth and death of Nirva’s cubs, 19 cheetah cubs have been born in Kuno since the arrival of 20 adult African cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa in 2022 and 2023 as part of Project Cheetah, India’s ambitious cheetah re-introduction programme based at Kuno. And out of the 19, seven cubs have died so far.
Of the 20 adults, eight have died due to various reasons including what experts have called septicaemia, an infection of the blood.