Bhiwandi: A forest department team tranquilised a leopard trapped by villagers in a gutter in Lonad village of Bhiwandi and then rescued it safely after around eight hours of effort. The forest department suspects that the leopard mistakenly reached Bhiwandi from Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary, which is about 20 to 25 kilometres away, in search of food.
The incident came to light in Lonad village, located in the Padgha region of Bhiwandi taluka in Thane district, where a leopard was spotted for the last two days. The locals claimed that on Friday morning, when some people saw the leopard going into the gutter, they cordoned off the area by blocking the path on both sides so that the animal could not come out and attack anybody.
After this, the villagers informed the local forest department about the leopard. Different forest teams reached the spot, and late in the evening, a special rapid rescue team from Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), which has experience in rescuing leopards, also arrived.
Apart from this, many NGOs working for animals, including the PAWS, RAWW, and WWA teams, also reached the spot and assisted the police into crowd management and also helped SGNP rapid rescue team and the forest department.
A forest official said that to trap the leopard, they first disconnected the electricity for sometime so that locals who had gathered in large numbers would leave the place, after which they brought a cage from SGNP. The rescue team blocked one side of the gutter by installing a cage, while from the other side, the forest team was deployed to tranquilise the leopard. They finally lured the leopard into the cage, where they tranquilised it and then caught it.
The rescue team later took the leopard to SGNP to supervise its health. The team found the leopard to be male and eight years old. Nilesh Bhange, founder of PAWS, said that generally, leopards are seen in many green areas of Thane district, but it is expected that this leopard might have come to Padgha of Bhiwandi from the nearby Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary. Bhangr further said, “There are many leopards there, and due to rapid road construction work, including the Mumbai-Delhi Highway, green areas are being destroyed on a large scale, which might have caused the leopard to get lost in search of food.”
Bhange said that for a long time, animal lovers have been demanding that, like in Mumbai, all the leopards in Thane district should also be microchipped and radio-collared should be installed so that their activity can be monitored in this region.
