The hunt grew into a sprawling, military-style operation, eventually encompassing a heat-seeking drone, hundreds of people, more than a hundred remote cameras and a team of specially trained Indian elephants with sharpshooters mounted on their backs.

But three things complicated the effort. The tiger was a mother of two young cubs, and the authorities did not want to harm the young tigers. The grass was high and the bushes were overgrown because monsoon rains ended only recently. And this tiger was seen as unusually crafty.

Tiger experts say she had benefited from past attempts to capture her and knew how to slink through the bush undetected, sometimes just a few steps ahead of the teams of rangers and police officers looking for her.

“She has learned from all these botched capture operations,’’ said Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, a famous tiger hunter whom the authorities had called in to help. “We’ve made her very smart. Brilliant, actually.”

The break may have come from a surprise source: a bottle of Obsession cologne.

Obsession (a popular men’s fragrance in the 1990s) contains civetone, a compound originally derived from the scent glands of a civet. In areas where it’s been sprayed, cats take huge sniffs and roll around in it for several minutes.

Last month, the Indian rangers squirted some Obsession on bushes here and there, hoping to draw the tiger out. On Friday afternoon, the rangers sprayed some Obsession and tiger urine in an area where she was believed to be hiding.