Leopard enters residential area in Alwar, caught
ALWAR: An eight-year-old leopard was captured by forest department officials on Friday, after having a free run of a crowded Alwar neighbourhood for almost seven hours.
The incident in the Rajasthan town comes almost 32 years after a big cat entered the official residence of then district collector and now chief election commissioner Sunil Arora.
In 1987, a local police officer shot dead the leopard. On Friday, the animal was captured and released in the Dugan Jodi forest area behind Alwar Fort.
At about 6 am, people in the town’s Arya Nagar neighbourhood saw a leopard. “When I came out with my husband for a morning walk, we saw it and started shouting. It went to the terrace of our house and hid inside a storeroom on the third floor,” Rakhi Garg said.
They informed the forest department and a team from its local office as well as from the Sariska Tiger Reserve arrived and started preparing to catch the leopard. During their three failed attempts to tranquilize the big cat, the leopard stayed in the storeroom for five hours, then came out and leapt from house to house, and finally hid under a vehicle on the road.
It was finally tranquilized at 11.15 pm.
The leopard was taken to the Alwar forest office for a medical check-up before being released in the forest. “The leopard had a small injury near its eye, which was treated before its release,” said district forest officer Alok Nath Gupta.
The incident reminded locals of 1987 when a leopard had entered official residence of Arora after jumping over the roofs of several homes.
“A local police officer shot the animal dead with his service revolver,” said former Rajasthan police chief Manoj Bhatt, who was then superintendent of police, Alwar.
Bhatt recalled that the leopard was sitting on a branch of a tree on the boundary of the collector’s residence and a large crowd had gathered below.
“A rescue team of the forest department could not tranquilize the leopard. Anything could have happened if the leopard jumped on the crowd. A police officer from Kotwali police station shot the animal dead with his service revolver,” he said.