4-YR-OLD MAULED TO DEATH BY LEOPARD IN KASHMIR

At around 7.40pm on Thursday, Adha Yasir’s parents heard a sharp cry.

The four-year-old girl was playing on the lawn of her house in Jammu and Kashmir’s Budgam district. Her parents, who were in the house, and neighbours in Ompora Housing Colony remember the girl running about. The parents rushed out, only to find their daughter nowhere. They alerted the neighbours, the local police and launched a massive search operation. Roughly one hour later, local residents found the girl’s necklace and slippers from the forest that surrounded the colony. “This raised suspicion that the girl was taken away by a leopard, which are common in the area,” said Ehsan Fazili, a neighbour. In the early hours of Friday, their fears came true. Police found Yasir’s mutilated body in the forest nursery located one kilometre from her house, said an official who was part of the search team. “After receiving the information, a police team, locals and the wildlife department constituted various teams to trace the girl. After massive searches, the teams recovered the mauled body of the girl from the nearby forest nursery. Preliminary investigation suggests that the girl has been attacked and mauled by some wild animal (probably Leopard), said senior superintendent of police (Budgam) Tahir Saleem. Local residents and politicians blamed the wildlife department for the death of the girl. “This is the nursery not the forest so they could have easily cleared trees from this place,” said Shabir Ahmad, another neighbour.