LUCKNOW: A male leopard, in its prime, struck terror as it injured seven persons in Gudumba police station which comprises Kalyanpur, Adilnagar, Paharpur, Phulbagh, and Jankipuram (Sector-H) areas of the city.
Panic on outskirts as leopard spotted in Gudamba area of Lucknow
People residing in these areas went into a tizzy after they spotted the leopard moving through the bylanes. A team of forest department officials was rushed to the spot to trap the feline, which had apparently strayed into the city area from the jungles of adjoining Barabanki district.
The movement of the leopard was caught in the CCTV cameras installed in residential areas of Gudamba.
A woman, Dharmdai Rawat, who stays on a school campus in Kalyanpur, was the first to be attacked by the feline. The badly injured woman got 32 stitches.
"I was working in the fields around 8am when all of a sudden a big cat hit on my back," said Dharmdai, who was yet to come out of the trauma.
"Before I could call for help, the leopard hit on my temple with its claws. My son Veeru tried to distract the leopard but he was also attacked," she said.
In the meantime, Dharmdai’s husband Gajraj Rawat, who works as a peon in the school, rushed for help. However, the leopard fled.
The news spread like wildfire in the colony. Around 11am on Saturday, police teams reached the spot.
At least five forest department teams comprising 25 members were stationed in Adilnagar, Kalyanpur and Paharpur areas of Gudumba.
Before the cops and forest officials could react, the feline attacked another man, Yusuf, in the same locality.
Though the forest officials conducted an extensive combing operation but failed to trap the wildcat.
Around 5.30pm, a retired policeman, RS Massih (76) of Adilnagar, who had gone to the house of his daughter, Saroj Mathews, to celebrate Christmas was attacked by the leopard. The leopard fled hearing commotion.
Police and forest department officials reached the village and tried to pacify the people and keep them away from the area where the leopard was apparently hiding.
Around midnight, the leopard got trapped in a net laid in a pit but it managed to escape and attacked some persons who had reached there to get a view of the animal.
A police official said the leopard inflicted injuries on seven persons.
Additional deputy commissioner of police, north zone, Prachi Singh said police and forest officials were on the lookout for the leopard. "Officials have been asked to cordon off the area in case they spot the leopard," she added.
District forest officer (DFO), Lucknow, Ravi Kumar, who is supervising the operations, told TOI that 25 members of the forest department were looking for the leopard. "It seems that the three-year-old leopard has strayed from Barabanki. We are trying to trap it so that it can be released in the wild," he said.
(With inputs from Vivek Singh Chauhan and Himanshu Singh)
