A ‘maneater’ leopard has been killed in Uttarakhand by the hunters engaged by the state forest department on Sunday - second in the last one week . On Sunday night, a ‘maneater’ leopard that had maimed two children to death in Pauri Garhwal district was killed by hunter Azhar Khan, who works with team of hunters led by hunter Joy Mukil.
Khan said that the leopard had killed a child in the district on October 2 and another child nearly four months back.
“After people protested and demanded the leopard’s elimination, I was asked by the forest department to hunt it down on October 3. I had been tracking its movement in the nearby areas of the affected villages in the district since that day. Finally I was able to shoot it on Sunday night”, he said.
Joy Hukil, a businessman from Pauri district, said two ‘maneater’ leopards were eliminated by him and his team member within a week. “While I have eliminated 34 maneater leopards so far, this is the second leopard eliminated by Azhar Khan, who has been accompanying me in hunting,” Joy said.
Joy had killed a ‘maneater’ leopard for stirring terror in some areas of Pithoragarh on October 5. The leopard had killed a woman in Pithoragarh’s Papdeo village on September 3. Following demands from the locals for elimination of the leopard from the area, permission for the same was granted on September 25 and Hukil was deputed to eliminate it. On the same day, a 12-year-old girl was also killed by a leopard in Pauri Garhwal district while she was playing near her home.
{{/usCountry}}Joy had killed a ‘maneater’ leopard for stirring terror in some areas of Pithoragarh on October 5. The leopard had killed a woman in Pithoragarh’s Papdeo village on September 3. Following demands from the locals for elimination of the leopard from the area, permission for the same was granted on September 25 and Hukil was deputed to eliminate it. On the same day, a 12-year-old girl was also killed by a leopard in Pauri Garhwal district while she was playing near her home.
{{/usCountry}}This is not the first time that a leopard has been killed by hunters engaged by the forest department .
In September last year, a ‘maneater’ leopard that killed a four-year-old girl in Bageshwar district’s Nadi Gaon area, was shot dead a month later by forest department’s deployed hunter Lakhpat Singh. Singh had also killed another leopard who had claimed nine lives in Almora in September last year. In another similar incident in June, angry villagers in Harinagari area of Bageshwar set a forest afire after a leopard killed a seven-year-old boy who was later eliminated by Lakhpat Singh with due permission.