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Man-eater leopard caged in Bjnor, to be sent to Gkp zoo
Sub-divisional officer ( SDO) of forests in Bijnor, Gyan Singh said that 16 cages were placed at different locations to capture the animal and it eventually walked into the cage on Wednesday. “Arrangements are being made to shift it to Gorakhpur zoo,” said Singh.
MEERUT Foresters and wildlife experts on Wednesday finally managed to cage the maneater leopard which killed three people, including a woman and a teenage girl, in the jungles of Pilana village and nearby Jalalpur Hasna village of Chandpur in Bijnor district within a month.
Several teams of the forest department and wildlife experts were making every possible efforts to capture this maneater for the past month. They intensified their efforts after it killed a farmer in Jalalpur Hasna on August 23 and ate the flesh of his face and neck.
Earlier, the feline had killed a teenage girl and a woman who had gone to collect fodder in the jungle of Pilana, but it could not eat their flesh because they were killed in daylight and farmers working in the fields rushed to the spot after hearing their screams.
Sub-divisional officer ( SDO) of forests in Bijnor, Gyan Singh said that 16 cages were placed at different locations to capture the animal and it eventually walked into the cage on Wednesday.
“ Arrangements are being made to shift it to Gorakhpur zoo,” said Singh.
He claimed that the rosettes ( print on the skin) of the captured leopard matched the images of the animal captured in trap cameras . Moreover, its lower canines were found worn out which perhaps turned it into a maneater.
To note, leopard and other hunting animals use these teeth to kill animals. If these teeth break, hunting of animals becomes difficult for them and humans become soft and easy targets .
“ It is a 7 to 8- year-old mature animal weighing more than 80 kg,” said Singh.
Conservator of forests of Moradabad division Ramesh Chandra said, “Its movement was captured thrice near a cage in the night a day before it was captured. Cages were repositioned on its track and it got into one.”
People in many areas of the district are living in constant fear of leopards as they have killed 23 people since February 2023 and injured more than 20 .
News of the leopard’s movement was going around in areas like Pilana, Sisauna, Karal, Pipalsana, Kulchana, Chehala Jalalpur Bhud etc. for the past one month and people were demanding that it be captured immediately.
