The butchering and dismembering of a Royal Bengal Tiger by a mob in Assam's Golaghat district lay bare the critical gaps that still exist in conservation efforts despite a steady increase in tiger population in the state. The revenge killing of the tiger by the mob has pressed the alarm bell on the safety of tigers straying into fringe villages of protected areas. If not checked, human-animal conflict will further aggravate and pose an extinction threat to tigers in the state. Investigation into the shocking incident to find out if there was laxity on the part of the Forest Department and local administration to execute the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority to deal with emergencies arising due to the straying of tigers in a human-dominated landscape. While all those involved in the killing of the tiger must be brought to book, accountability must be fixed on erring officials if the probe reveals any laxity on their part to adhere to the SOP. The purpose of the SOP is to ensure that straying tigers are handled in the most appropriate manner to avoid casualty/injury to human beings, tigers, cattle and property. It also provides the basic, minimum steps which are required to be taken at the field level (tiger reserve or elsewhere) for dealing with incidents of tiger straying in human-dominated landscapes. It applies to all forest field formations, including tiger reserves, besides other areas where such incidents occur. Therefore, the SOP applies to the village where the mob killed the tiger even though the origin of the tiger is yet to be ascertained. In case of confirmed livestock depredation/human injury/fatal encounters or frequent straying of tigers near human settlements, traps (automatic closure) with appropriate luring while avoiding disturbance are to be set up to trap the animal, the SOP states. It also envisages proactively involving the district collector/district magistrate and superintendent of police of the district to maintain law and order in the area, besides avoiding crowding by local mobs and acquainting them with human-tiger conflict issues and guidelines of the NTCA to deal with the situation. Other key provisions of the SOP are: if successive trapping efforts fail, chemical immobilisation of the wild carnivore should be done by an expert team having a veterinarian, as per the protocol; in case the tranquilised tiger is found to be healthy in prime or young age without any incapacitation, then it may be released after radio collaring in a suitable habitat with adequate prey base, away from the territory of a resident male tiger (if any) or human settlements, under intimation to the NTCA, and under no circumstances should a tiger be eliminated by invoking the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, if it is not habituated to causing human death. Forest officials alleged that villagers themselves labelled the tiger as a "man-eater" after they suspected that it had killed a villager in the area. All these point to a serious lack of awareness among the villagers about their role in protecting a tiger with active cooperation from the forest department, local administration, and police authorities when it strays into their village. This calls for a comprehensive review of the approach taken by the Forest Department and different NGOs working on wildlife conservation and human-wildlife conflict to build conservation awareness among people, more particularly in areas witnessing human-wildlife conflict, to identify the gaps and evolve new strategies to address those. All awareness drives are participatory in nature instead of one-way. Communication is essential to test if the participants have understood the dos and don'ts in the conservation of wild animals when they stray into their area and have become empowered after attending the training sessions to follow the advisory. The perception that the Forest Department is responsible for the protection and conservation of wildlife and people have limited roles in it dominates when conservation awareness initiatives leave out the masses and target only a few among the villagers as volunteers. The process of building awareness of wildlife conservation and people's role in the mitigation of human-wildlife conflict needs to bring the Forest Department and villagers closer. While the SOP on tiger/carnivore straying into the human landscape has been developed to equip the forest officials, local administration and policy authorities with dos and don'ts, disseminating the basic guidelines among the people will help them - people in villages reporting straying of tigers/carnivores - to play their part as important stakeholders in the mitigation of human-wildlife conflict. Shrinking habitat, decline in prey base, and drying of water waterbodies compel stressed animals to stray outside protected areas into the human landscape in search of food for survival. Climate change impact, fragmentation of wildlife habitat due to infrastructure development, and loss of forest cover due to illegal logging will only lead to escalation of human-wildlife conflict. Evolving new strategies of conservation awareness in the state is an urgent need of the hour.