The dwellers of a tiny hutment located off the IIT-Bombay campus at Powai in north-east Mumbai were in for a surprise as a large spotted deer — apparently after being chased by a leopard from the nearby Sanjay Gandhi National Park — crashed through their roof and landed in their house in the early hours of Sunday.

In what virtually came as a bolt from the blue, the deer crash-landed into the one room house of one Mrs Sunita Singh in Hanuman Tekdi slum colony located on the neighbourhood of IIT-Bombay campus, which is on the periphery of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.

As the forest officials surmised later in the morning, the deer might have run for its life after being chased from a nearby hillock of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and crashed into hutment through the roof.

Woken up from their slumbers, the dwellers of the entire slum colony gathered outside Mrs Singh’s tenement. Before long, a few of the slum dwellers alerted the Forest department about the incident

“We received a distress call from a few of the residents in the slum colony. They informed us that a deer has crashed into the house through the roof,” Wildlife Warden Pawan Sharma said.

The Forest Department’s Mumbai Range swiftly rushed a 7-member team to rescue the large deer.

The team later took it away to Sanjay Gandhi National Park’s Rescue Centre for further medical examination and rehabilitation.

The affected family said that the deer was lying in their house quietly before the rescue team arrived to take it back to the forest environs. “Though it appeared shocked, the deer remained calm and composed all through. The deer crash did not result in any damage to household articles like the fan, TV, gas, cupboards, bed etc,” Mrs Singh said.

Sunday’s incident should be seen in the context of the fact that during the lockdown, the animals from the wild like flocks of peacocks, kingfishers, dolphins, deer, foxes, mongoose, large snakes are being seen in the human habitats.