Man-eater leopard killed by deputed hunter

| | PAURI
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Man-eater leopard killed by deputed hunter

Tuesday, 30 September 2014 | GP Semwal | PAURI

A leopard, suspected of being the man-eater responsible for the killing of two persons in Maletha village of Ekeshwar block in Pauri district, was shot on Sunday late evening by the hunter deputed by the Forest Department.

The big cat was sighted near the place where it had killed  57-year-old Maheshwari Devi in broad daylight earlier in the day. The leopard was a female aged about eight years. Whether this leopardess was a man- eater or not would be ascertained only after the postmortem report is received.

On Monday, Maletha residents demonstrated at the collectorate, carrying the body of Maheshwari Devi. They also gheorad the District Magistrate Chandra Shekhar Bhatt, demanding the hunter be re-deputed in Maletha village as there are about four to five leopards in the area. Notably, the hunter had returned to Pauri after killing the big cat on Sunday.  Bhatt talked to Chief Wildlife Warden DVS Khati and sent him a fax. The angry villagers said they would remove the body only after the order from Khati was received and handed over to them for verification.

DM, however, persuaded them to take the body for cremation and assured to show the faxed order to them. The villagers also demanded that the next of kin of the deceased should be given a job.  The DM assured the villagers that he will write to the Government on the matter.

The husband of Guddi Devi who was killed by a leopard on September 22 in Maletha said he had received only a part of the compensation amount as promised by the forest department so far. He demanded the rest of the money be given to him promptly.

The forest department presented a cheque for Rs 90,000 to the son of the deceased Maheshwari Devi in presence of the DM.  The irate villagers demanded that the Garhwal divisional forest officer Raj Mani Pandey be suspended. They said he had never visited the spots where the big cat mauled the villagers. Besides, he was nonchalant with the   animal - human conflict assuming grim dimensions, they alleged.

The DM later told The Pioneer that the faxed order from the Chief Wildlife Warden had been given to the villagers. The Chief Wildlife Warden had instructed the department to set up cages in the sensitive areas of Maletha village to trap the leopard, but in case the leopard continued to be pose a danger to humans it could be killed by a hunter deputed  by the department.  

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