Exhausted big cat needs good rest, says forest official; search on for pug marks to trace its route

The four-and-a-half-year-old leopard entered the ground-plus four-storey Shri Ram Anuraga Tower on Thursday after crossing a chawl and another building. It got stuck between the staircase and the passage after injuring three residents. It also attacked two members of the rescue team

After 10 hours of a noisy trap inside a residential building, the big cat is stressed out and needs isolation and rest, the forest officials who sent the animal to Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) have said.

The leopard that was rescued at a building in Kalyan on Thursday. (Pramod Tambe/HT Photo)

The four-and-a-half-year-old leopard entered the ground-plus four-storey Shri Ram Anuraga Tower on Thursday after crossing a chawl and another building. It got stuck between the staircase and the passage after injuring three residents. It also attacked two members of the rescue team.

Girija Desai, assistant conservator of forest, Thane, said, “Although the leopard is physically alright it needs good rest and attention as it was stressed throughout the day. Usually, we keep an animal at the centre for at least 24 hours after the tranquilisation but it might take some more time in this case. As per the directions from the higher authorities we will decide the further course of action.”

The leopard will now undergo a medical check-up to help the forest officials find out what it had eaten throughout its journey, which will also throw light on the route it had taken, Desai said.

Meanwhile, the forest department is looking for pug marks in nearby grasslands and waterbodies. “We can take the help of rescuers and organisations who are very active and have great knowledge about the wildlife,” Desai added.

Kalyan range forest officer Sanjay Channe said a five-member team headed by an officer is already on the job to trace the leopard’s route. “We will also check if someone had spotted the big cat in the last two-three days. As of now we have not received any information on sightings or attack on human or animals.”

One of the injured, Rajiv Pandey, 38, who was attacked on his head, back and hand while he was holding his six-day-old daughter returned home from hospital on Friday.

“Entering the building seems scary for most of us after the nightmare. It will take a few days to digest the fact that we all just had an encounter with the wildlife. The staircase and the passage still have the remains of the firecrackers busted to scare the leopard away,” Rajiv’s elder brother Manoj said.

With the rise in incidents of leopard entering human settlements in the last five years, activists have demanded the animals, after their capture, be tagged with radio collars and microchips to know about their movement.

Nilesh Bhange, who runs Plant and Animal Welfare Society, said, “First, a leopard entered a bungalow in Ulhasnagar; then another got his head stuck in a pot in Badlapur. Now this is the third incident in the last five years. Leopards in Thane district are not fitted with microchips and radio collars. Also, their head count has not been carried out by the forest department.”