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6-year-old girl mauled to death by leopard on trekking path to Tirumala
The girl was trekking the Tirumala hills along with her parents along the pedestrian route from Alipiri in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati district on Friday night
A six-year-old girl was mauled to death by a leopard while she was trekking the Tirumala hills along with her parents along the pedestrian route from Alipiri in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati district on Friday night, officials said.
The body of the girl, identified as Lakshita, who went missing at around 8pm, was found in the bushes near Lord Narasimha Swamy temple in the early hours of Saturday.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams’ divisional forest officer Satish Reddy initially said Lakshita might have been attacked by a wild animal – it could be a leopard or a bear – going by the deep injuries on her body.
However, a post-mortem of the girl’s body at Sri Venkata Ramana Ruia Hospital at Tirupati, concluded that Lakshita was indeed mauled by a leopard, which had eaten some parts of the body before going back deep into the forests on the hills.
“We appeal to all the devotees not to trek the path in isolation, but in groups. We have declared the area between the seventh mile up to Lord Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple as a high alert zone and we shall step up security and vigilance in the area. We shall also recommend to the TTD to install closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras,” Reddy said.
According a senior official from the TTD vigilance and security wing, the girl, along with her parents – Dinesh and Sasikala from Pothireddypalem village of Kovvur mandal (block) in Nellore district, suddenly disappeared when she was following her parents on the pedestrian path from the foothills of Alipiri to Tirumala.
The parents, who searched for her in vain, complained to the vigilance and security authorities. They, along with the police and forest department authorities, rushed to the area and took up search operations. “Early in the morning, some pedestrians noticed the mutilated body of Lakshitha near the temple.
After the post-mortem, the body was handed over to the parents, who took her to their village immediately.
The incident triggered panic among the devotees, who take to trekking to reach Tirumala. “This is for the first time that a leopard has killed a devotee, though there were incidents of leopard attacks on the pilgrims in the past,” the V&S official quoted above said.
On June 22, a five-year-old boy was attacked by a leopard in a similar manner near the 7th mile along the Alipiri pedestrian route, but he managed to escape after fellow pilgrims raised an alarm. The forest authorities captured the leopard the next day.
