NEW YORK: The two Indian American brothers who survived a tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day are contemplating their legal options against the zoo authorities.The zoo that was closed since Tatiana, the four-year old tiger jumped its enclosure and mauled three youths, killing one Carlos Sousa Jr. and injuring the two brothers, has reopened since.

Witnesses are coming out of the woodwork to give accounts indicating the possibility of the tiger being teased and provoked. And the police investigations are on. But the brothers are yet to come out and speak about the incident.Brothers Paul (19) and Kulbir (23) Dhaliwal, it is believed, have hired Mark Geragos, the defense attorney once hired by Michael Jackson, Winona Ryder, Gary Condit and Scott Peterson to represent them.

The Dhaliwal brothers, who were admitted to the San Francisco General Hospital with severe bite and claw wounds, have since been released. Initial police investigations revealed that Kulbir, the older of the brothers, was the first to have been attacked by the 350-pound Siberian tiger. As the tiger clawed and bit him, Carlos Sousa and the younger brother yelled in hopes of scaring it off him, police said.

The tiger then went for Sousa, slashing his neck as the brothers ran to a zoo cafe for help.After killing the teenager, the tiger followed a trail of blood left by Kulbir Dhaliwal about 300 yards to the cafe, where it mauled both men, before being shot to death by the police.

Reports said that four officers who had already discovered Sousa’s body when they arrived on the scene, found the tiger sitting next to one of the bloodied brothers, police Chief Heather Fong said.

The victim yelled, “Help me! Help me!” and the animal resumed its attack, Fong told reporters.The officers used their patrol car lights to distract the tiger, and when it turned and began approaching them, all four of them opened fire. Despite the differing accounts of the animal being teased or provoked into attacking, the police have not concluded their investigations to confirm any one theory as to why the tiger went on a rampage.

In fact, last week, Fong denied earlier reports that police were looking into the possibility that the victims had dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of the moat, after a shoe and blood was found inside the enclosure.

No shoe was found inside, but a shoeprint was found on the railing of the fence surrounding the enclosure, and police are checking it against the shoes of the three victims, it has been reported.Meanwhile, the zoo has reopened to the public except for the tiger and lion enclosures. These would be opened only upon the construction of a higher wall around the moat, it is reported.