Panic struck Kodiya village in Gir Gadhda taluka of Gir Somnath district on Friday night when an adult male leopard in a bid to escape from villagers entered the house of a farmer. It took forest officers over two hours to rescue the 10-year-old leopard that had earlier killed an animal in the village.
According to a forest officer, the leopard was spotted by some villagers on the outskirts of the village after it killed an animal and was preying on it. The villagers called others from the village and tried to scare away the leopard out of the village into the forest.
But seeing the crowd gather outside the village, the leopard, instead of running towards the forest, went towards the village and entered the house of one Kalu Varsadia. However, it got trapped after Varsadia locked the door from the outside and called the forest officials.
A team of the forest officials rushed to the village with a cage and began the operation to capture the wild animal.
Assistant conservator of forest Nikunj Parmar said “We used a snare made out of rope to capture the leopard. It took us over an hour to get the leopard into the snare.”
He said that once the leopard got caught in the snare, they set up the cage outside the door and pulled it towards the door and then got it inside the cage.
The two-hour rescue operation had let to a commotion in the entire village as hundreds surrounded the house of Varsadia to have a glimpse of the leopard being captured.