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Lucknow: Irate villagers chased, shot and burned a 4-year-old leopard after it strayed into their area from a nearby north Indian tiger reserve, a forest official said on Friday.
They complained the leopard had killed five people in the past four months, as well as dogs and goats kept by the villagers.
Wildlife reserve staff who had been on the animal's trail for the past three months spotted it early this week but were unsuccessful in trying to tranquilise it, senior forest official Kartik Kumar Singh said yesterday.
Nearly 3,000 villagers thwarted their efforts by throwing stones at the animal each time it was trapped in the bushes, Singh said. "The villagers fired shots at the leopard and when the animal entered a hut they set it on fire," he said. The leopard was burned to death on Thursday near Dudhwa National Park, 250km southeast of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, he said. Leopards are considered an endangered animal in India. Krishna Kumar Mishra, a wildlife biologist working for animal conservation, blamed forest officials for the loss of the leopard.
"We lost five human lives and a leopard due to the apathy of forest officials. The forest officials are neither trained nor equipped to tranquillise animals," he said.
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