DEHRADUN: A leopard, with what forest officials say is a “distinct taste for drunkards”, is roaming the Kumaon hills and has already killed 13 people in two years. It remains elusive and hiring sharp shooters to bring it down has not helped matters at all.

Wildlife experts have noticed some peculiarities about the man-eater. Lakhpat Rawat, a shooter hired by the forest department to kill the animal, said, “It seems only to attack men, not women, and most of the people it attacked were drunk. He seems to be able to smell alcohol. Most of the men were killed on the pavement, not in jungles.”

Ashish Das Gupta, who closely studied the photograph of a man the animal killed on September 21, said, “The man’s private parts were mutilated, but the animal seems not to have eaten flesh from there. The viscera was visible, but mostly untouched. This sort of wound is usually the trait of male big cats that kill to show male supremacy.”

Prashant Singh, a shooter who is also a medical practitioner, however, believes that because it is usually drunkards who venture out at night, they are easy prey for nocturnal animals. “The leopard might hide behind bushes, but it walks on the pavements too,” he said.

Another forest official even had a conspiracy theory. It is not the animal that is wily, but human beings, he suggested. “People leave drunken or old men out of the house, knowing the leopard might attack. It’s a ploy, I suspect, to claim compensation from the government,” the official said, seeking anonymity.

SV Sharma, conservator of forests, North Kumaon, said, “It’s a cunning cat. It eats up some part in one go and then leaves the body there to travel another 15 km before striking again.”

This is something IP Singh, divisional forest officer, attested. “After every kill, the animal travels some 10-15 km before striking again, so it is hard to keep track of it. We have hired shooters, but none of them could kill it.”

Though shooters Lakhpat Rawat, Joy Hukil, Prashant Singh, Ashish Das Gupta and an ex-serviceman have so far been hired for the job, they have their own set of problems, chief among them the non-payment of salary. Speaking with TOI, Ashish Das Gupta said, “The forest department is not paying me for the task. I was not even reimbursed for the fuel I used, travelling to and from Himachal Pradesh. I have refused to carry out this assignment.”

Das Gupta and Prashant Singh slammed forest officials, saying little was done to systematically track the animal or trace its route or location.

Wildlife expert Vinod Rishi said, “The credibility of the forest department is already low in public eyes. If an innocent leopard is killed, that would be even worse. There are so many scientific methods now to keep track of the animal – like collecting pug marks, for instance. It should not be hard to trace this particular leopard.”



Facebook Twitter Linkedin EMail