A leopard escaped from its enclosure in Van Vihar national park in Bhopal on Tuesday morning. The national park has been closed down for visitors after the incident and forest officers are searching for the animal in the nearby areas. Forest officials believe the big cat is on the park premises.
According to sources, the leopard could have escaped sometime during the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday and Van Vihar officials came to know about it only on Tuesday morning. The visitors coming to the Van Vihar were sent back by the administration without giving any reason to them.
The people visiting the nearby Boat Club and National Museum of Mankind were unaware that a leopard was on the loose in the national park.
The food joints and eatery owners near the Van Vihar area were also unaware about the big cat’s escape. “We didn’t know that a leopard is on the loose as nobody informed us about it. last evening at around 8 pm, we saw about 10-15 forest officials rushing towards the Van Vihar, but didn’t know that they were going there to catch the escaped leopard,” said Ram lal, an ice-cream vendor in Boat Club which is adjacent to Van Vihar.
The sources informed that the escaped leopard was a man-eater and had been brought to the Van Vihar from Sehore in March. The leopard had attacked about 20 people in the area in which a five-year-old girl was killed by it.
The Van Vihar officials, however, denied that the escaped leopard was a man-eater and said that it would soon be caught.
“The leopard had escaped on Tuesday morning itself and was not a man-eater. Van Vihar has been closed for the visitors and teams of the forest officials are trying to search it in the national park itself. It would soon be caught,” said Dr Atul Gupta, veterinary officer, Van Vihar.