Madhya Pradesh villager offers water to cheetahs in viral video, suspended from job
A viral video showing a forest department driver offering water to cheetahs in Madhya Pradesh sparked mixed reactions.
A video of a forest department driver offering water to thirsty cheetahs in Madhya Pradesh has gone massively viral online. But what many saw as a heartwarming act of coexistence has landed the driver in trouble. According to a Times of India report, he has been suspended from his job after his video went viral.
The viral video
Over the weekend, a video that emerged on social media showed a family of cheetahs lying in the shade of a tree. A villager, later identified as forest department driver Satyanarayan Gurjar, approached the cheetah family cautiously with a jerrycan of water in his hand.
Once he was a few feet away from the cheetahs, Gurjar stopped and poured water into a steel plate. “Come, come,” some people off camera were heard saying. The cheetahs rose up and approached Gurjar immediately. They were then seen drinking water from the plate.
The video was reportedly filmed at a village on the outskirts of Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh.
This extraordinary encounter took place just two weeks after villagers pelted the cheetah Jwala and her four cubs with stones. Many called it a heartwarming moment, one that signalled a future of peaceful coexistence. However, the forest department took a different view.
According to Times of India, after the video went viral, Kuno Forest Division officers visited the spot and removed Satyanarayan Gurjar from his position as a department driver.
Forest officers fear that cheetahs might get too comfortable around humans and stray into residential areas.
“The recent act of offering water symbolizes a growing understanding and shift in behaviour. The villagers, perhaps realizing that the cheetahs were not inherently a threat but part of the region's natural ecosystem, chose to approach the situation differently this time. But again, we would not want them to get this close and develop any bond like this,” a forest department official said.
