KAMAREDDY: Cattle grazers from Boppaspllay village of the district had a chance encounter with a leopard on Monday. Reportedly entangled in a hunter’s snare, the big cat could be seen struggling to come out of the one-metre deep Continuous Contour Trench. Rescue operations to bring the big cat out of the trench was still on till the last reports came in.
Visibly weakened, the leopard has reportedly been trapped for a week now but the incident was only reported to the forest officials by the villagers on Monday. Upon being informed about the wildcat, a team of forest officials led by Banswada Forest Range Officer (FRO) Y Gangadhar reached the spot. The FRO assured that a special rescue team would free the animal and shift it to the Hyderabad Zoo Park by Monday night. The cattle grazers, meanwhile, said that they spotted the trapped animal in the CCT in Reserve Forest (RF) area around 11 am on Monday and informed the local forest staff, who, in turn, informed about the situation to the Kamareddy District Forest Range Officer K Vasantha.
She reached the spot along with her team. Later, she conveyed the information to higher officials and the animal rescue team was called in. As the number of villagers at the site kept on increasing, the officials camped around half a kilometre from the CCT to prevent the villagers from going too close to the wild animal.
The local police also reached the spot and extended cooperation to the forest officials to control the villagers who were trying to shoot the leopard from their mobile phones. Denying that poachers were behind the incident, Gangadhar said that leopard had accidentally fallen in the trench which was dug by the department in the past for demarcating the forest boundaries. However, he maintained that the department would collect all the details regarding the incident and submit a report to higher officials.
Only then would it will be decided whether it was an accidental case or the leopard was trapped by poachers, he said. However, one look at the trapped leopard makes it clear that the incident was the handiwork of humans.