Lucknow: After two months of relentless pursuit, forest teams in Balrampur captured a leopardess claimed to be responsible for the death of six children and injuries to over a dozen people.
Employing multiple teams, advanced technology like infrared (IR) drone cameras, and traditional capture methods, the teams finally trapped the five-year-old big cat on Wednesday night.
M Semmaran, divisional forest officer (DFO) of Balrampur, said forest officers successfully trapped the leopardess in a cage in Belwa village, located on the border of the Balrampur forest division.
“While some teams spent up to 18 hours a day in search of the feline, one team deployed IR drone cameras to trace out and track the pugmarks of the predator,” he said.
“We spotted the pug marks using the drones and trailed it further to capture it using traditional methods,” he said.
Semmaran said the drone team fixed a location of the leopardess and another team tied a goat near a sugarcane field approximating the latest location.
“The leopardess was trapped with the bait. It was then put in a cage and brought to the Janakpur range office, from where we will send it to the Kanpur Zoo,” the DFO said.
The search teams are still vigilant and camping in the area, as they spotted more pug marks and suspect one more leopard may be around, the DFO said.
The first victim of the leopardess was Vandani, 5, at Lalnagar Sipahiya on November 4.
Four days later, the feline killed Arun Verma, 6. After this, teams from all seven ranges of the forest department, as well as teams led by the DFOs of Siddharthnagar and Barabanki, camped in the area to capture the leopardess, but to no avail.
In the meantime, the leopardess killed Vikas, 10, at Belwa village on November 16 and Ritesh, 5, at Bankatwa village on November 24, followed by Anushka, 10, at Bhagwanpur on December 3, and one Sameer Ansari at Dharampur.
The teams then installed 15 cages and 16 CCTV cameras across these places. They also procured the urine of a leopard from the Lucknow Zoo and sprayed it all over.
The leopardess proved too elusive in spite of all this effort. Finally, a high-tech team with an IR drone camera was called in from Kolkata, along with a team of the Wildlife of India from Delhi.
