On a warm November afternoon, Parul Haldar balanced precariously on the bow of a small wooden dinghy, pulling in a long net flecked with fish from the swirling brown river.

Just behind her loomed the dense forest of the Sundarbans, where some 10,000 square kilometers of tidal mangroves straddle India's northeastern coastline and western Bangladesh and open into the Bay of Bengal.

Four years ago, her husband disappeared on a fishing trip deep inside the forest. Two fishermen with him saw his body being dragged into the undergrowth — one of a rising number of humans killed by tigers as they venture into the wild.