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WWI team to visit Shimla to prepare plan to capture man-eater leopard
Teams of the state forest department are patrolling the localities situated close to forest areas, say officials
A team of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) experts will visit Shimla to formulate a strategy to capture the man-eater leopard that mauled a seven-year-old child to death on Diwali night on November 4.
All the efforts of the forest department to capture the animal have yielded no results.
“Teams of the state forest department are patrolling the localities situated close to forest areas. The leopard, which is constantly on the prowl, has been sighted repeatedly,” said Shimla wildlife divisional forest officer Ravi Shankar.
The department is also exploring options to chemically immobilise the animal, he said, adding “Our priority is to trap the leopard safely, for which cages have been installed in different areas.”
The leopard lifted a seven-year-old Yog Raj from outside his house on Diwali night. In an order passed on November 10, the commission had declared the leopard a man-eater. It has been ordered to capture the feline alive and keep it in captivity till life or kill it if it could not be captured.
The divisional forest officer-cum-wildlife warden (Shimla urban) has been directed to issue a death warrant of the leopard immediately.
Further, it directed the state authority to pay ₹4 lakh compensation to the victim’s family within five months. It also recommended installing CCTV cameras/camera traps in the Shimla city in the settlements adjoining the forest areas within a month and also remove the bushes in these areas within the given deadline.
The commission also ordered to create a protective buffer zone adjoining the wildlife areas and human residential areas in a month.
All the leopards in the forests of the town will be tagged or collared within one month for immediate location tracing. The forest department has been directed to submit an action taken report to the commission after the expiry of the deadline.
In August this year, the Himachal Pradesh Human Rights Commission had taken suo moto cognizance of the incident in which the leopard had killed a five-year-old girl.
