Lucknow: Aman Yadav, 12, was mauled to death by a leopard in the Khairighat police station area of Bahraich district in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday.
The incident was reported late on Saturday from Majra Jinghua of Tigda gram panchayat.
Fear gripped villagers after the incident and a team of police and forest officers is patrolling the area.
Police said the victim, son of one Lalji alias Seth Yadav, went close to a sugarcane field outside the village at around 1.30 pm on Saturday when a leopard hiding in the fields attacked him.
“Hearing the boy’s shrieks, many villagers rushed to the spot with sticks and began making a noise to scare away the big cat. By the time the family members took him to hospital, he was declared dead,” Prashant Verma, SP of Bahraich, said.
A police team reached the spot for an inquest while the body was sent for postmortem examination.
Sanjay Sharma, district forest officer, said, “The forest department team is conducting a combing operation,” adding that the forest department has installed a cage in the area to trap the leopard and, that, residents must be cautious.
