The Forest department on Friday captured a leopard that had terrorised the people living at Dhoni near here for the past two months. The three-year-old male leopard was trapped in a cage set up in the compound of a house where the animal had reached the previous night.
The leopard had emerged several times and attacked goats, cows, and poultry. On Thursday, it attacked the chicken at one Liji Joseph’s house. Following people’s pressure, forest officials set up a cage at Liji Joseph’s house and the leopard was caught.
Puduppariyaram grama panchayat member Unnikrishnan suffered scratch wounds on his arm when the leopard attacked him while removing the cage. He was admitted to hospital. His wounds are not serious.
The leopard was shifted to the forest office at Dhoni, where it was examined by a forest veterinarian. Palakkad Divisional Forest Officer Sreenivas Kurra said the leopard was found healthy and that it would be released in the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve on Friday night.
In January, two leopard cubs were found in an abandoned house at Ummini, near Dhoni. Although forest officers set up a cage to trap the mother leopard, it took away one of its cubs and evaded getting caught in the trap. The other cub was shifted to a veterinary hospital at Thrissur, but it died a few days ago.
The leopard caught at Dhoni on Friday was a different one. It had a different pattern of skin spots. It was not clear what happened to the leopard cub and its mother that appeared at Ummini in January.
