Once again mountain town Junagadh witness lions strolling in residential Gandhigram area within Municipal Corporation limit on Saturday mid-night.
A local resident captured video of two matured Asiatic lions moving around the streets of Gandhigram area for more than 20 minutes. On Sunday the news spread like wildfire. Gandhingram area considered as posh locality, where city’s General Post Office (GPO) and couple of educational institutions are also situated.
Couple of similar incident occurred in the city earlier this year, though in different localities. Both the incidents occurred in July this year. A group of four lions were seen moving on the road near the rock edict of Emperor Ashoka close to the residential area of the town.
A week prior to that a pride of eight lions including some cubs was seen strolling in Girnar Darwaja area of Junagadh. They stayed in the area for quite some time but did not harm anyone as there was nobody on the road at around 2.30 am. The incident came to light after a video of the pride of eight lions became viral on social media.
Interestingly, people of Junagadh are used to such incident as Girnar forest is just on the outskirts of city surrounding Gujarat’s tallest mountain Mount Girnar where wild animals like lions, leopard, bear etc. have their permanent habitat. As far as the recent incident is concern, Gandhigram area is just 5 km from forest boundary.
The forest officials said that they also came to know about the incident from the video which have become viral in social media. Since the big cats didn’t harm anyone, there is no issue.
Generally lions do not harm anybody unless they are hungry, he informed. The Girnar forest on the outskirts of Junagadh city is spread across 17827 hectare. As per the last census nearly 45 lions are part of Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary.