Fourth leopard caught from Andhra Pradesh's Alipiri-Tirumala route

The leopard was then shifted to Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park at Tirupati. The captured wild cat is a male and aged around five years old.

The fourth leopard was caught around 3:30 am when it walked into the cage to prey upon its bait, a dog.

TIRUMALA:  Forest officials trapped yet another leopard at the seventh mile adjacent to the Alipiri footpath leading to Tirumala in the wee hours of Monday.  

Forest officials shifting the
captured Leopard to SV Zoo
on Monday | Express

This is the fourth leopard to be captured after a minor boy survived an attack by a big cat on June 22 and the third one to be trapped in the past three weeks after a six-year-old girl, Lakshitha, was killed in a leopard attack.   

The elusive leopard was trapped around 3:30 a.m. after it walked into the cage set up at the seventh mile in the vicinity of Prasanna Anjaneya Swamy's idol on the Alipiri footpath. 

Captured leopard evaded trap for at least 
10 days: Official

According to the forest officials, the male leopard, estimated to be around five years old, had been evading the trap for the past 10 days. Moreover, its movement was captured on over 200 trap cameras last week. The heavily built feline was shifted to Sri Venkateswara Zoo Park in Tirupati to enable forensic experts to carry out medical tests on it.

As all the captured leopards are nearly of the same age, forest officials suspect that they may be a litter of the same mother. It may be recalled that the first leopard that was captured in June was released into Seshachalam forests after medical reports confirmed that it was not a man-eater.

The TTD and forest officials had launched an operation to capture the leopards. “The movement of all the leopards captured in the trap cameras have been trapped,” a forest official said.  

“The wild beast used to come near the trap and leave as it had seen the earlier leopards getting captured. So, we took several measures to trap it. We sprayed animal scent near the cage and deactivated the flashlight of camera traps to attract the leopard,” he explained.  

TTD Executive Officer AV Dharma Reddy said that all the captured leopards would be quarantined for three months at SV Zoo. 

Meanwhile, the IISER is yet to submit DNA and other analysis reports of the other two leopards that were captured soon after the killing of Lakshitha to ascertain which one of them had killed the girl. 
The report is expected in a week’s time. The samples of the leopard caught on Monday would also be sent to the lab, officials said.