Leopard menace continues to rage Garhwa as one more life got lost to leopard in Ranka block of Garhwa district taking the toll to two in a week there.
Conservator of forest Garhwa Dileep Kumar Yadav IFS has confirmed the second toll of human life by the leopard under the Ranka block. The leopard couldn't eat its victim under the Ranka block as it had done at Bhandariya where the leopard had eaten most of the flesh of the minor boy Vikram Turi.
Garhwa forest officials are making all possible efforts to track down this leopard which is now a man eater and only an official declaration of it by the chief wildlife warden Jharkhand Shashikar Samanta is awaited under section 11(1) a - which gives authority to the chief wildlife warden to permit any person to hunt such animal that kills and eats man citing reasons to declare the animal a man eater.
Shock and anger coupled with panic prevails in Garhwa district now as two blocks of it Bhandarya and Ranka have seen one each killing and eating in one case and just killing in the other case respectively by the leopard.
The graph of man - leopard hate, not conflict as here in this case man is helplessly at the receiving end of the attacks of the leopard, is filling the atmosphere at such a time when people en masse plan to visit Nature's scenic locations.
Year end joy and festivity in the jungles are doomed this time in the Garhwa district following this leopard killing in two cases and in one case killing and eating both.
Sources said the forest officials are at its wits end as to how to capture it. It set up a cage with a goat inside but the leopard avoided it.
Similarly there were camera traps around the killing site under the Bhandariya block where too came the image of the jackal and not of the leopard.
It is really a hard time for the forest officials as the enemy is big but highly fast to become evasive.
Conservator of forest Dileep Kumar Yadav said one fails to understand how a leopard is taking such a long journey from Bhandaria block to Ranka block.
Conservator further said there is no precise certainty that it is just one leopard that is all behind these two losses of life in Garhwa district or one more in the tiger reserve Latehar district.
Pug marks obtained from the sites are being examined to settle down the feature of the leopard.