Roaring justice, leopard in Indian court

AHMEDABAD: Employees at a courthouse in India had a fright on Friday after a young leopard was spotted prowling around the building, authorities said.

“Seeing the leopard the court staff ran out of the room and locked it from outside and informed us,” G.A. Zala, a forestry oficial in the western state of Gujarat, told AFP.

With an excited crowd gathering outside the court in the town of Chotila, the big cat was eventually found after three and a half hours hiding under a cupboard.

The animal, thought to be around two to three years old, was tranquilised and was due to be released in a forested area.

India’s environment ministry said in August that 1,144 people were killed between April 2014 and May 2017 by wild animals -- an average of more than one a day.

There are an estimated 12,00014,000 leopards in India, which are frequently killed when they stray into villages. Oficials say one is killed on average every day.

Experts say the number of incidents is on the rise due to shrinking forest habitats and urban expansion.

MONK KILLED

Indian forest rangers have launched a hunt for a leopard that killed a monk meditating under a tree deep in a jungle.

The monk, Rahul Walke Bodhi, had been meditating in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in the western state of Maharashtra for the last month, and was attacked while offering morning prayers on Tuesday, a forest oficial said.

Two other monks who were on their way to give him food said they witnessed the attack but Walke was dead by the time they reached him, according to a second forest oficial.

“I would like to tell everyone not to go into the forest,” Gajendra Narwane, deputy director of the reserve, told the BBC Marathi-language service.

Forest rangers have set up two cages and a camera trap to try to capture the animal. It was not clear what they would do with it if they caught it.

The forest, some 825 km (510 miles) east of the city of Mumbai, is in a reserve for big cats where four other fatal attacks have occurred in the last few weeks, according to media.

Forest oficials have cordoned off the area where the monk was killed and are restricting the timing of visitor access to a Buddhist temple there.