Foot-marks of leopard in Gandhinagar put forest department in tizzy, nothing found during search

Gandhinagar: Almost three weeks after the sensational entry of a leopard in the secretariat premises in Gujarat capital Gandhinagar, reports of pug marks (foot-print) of another such beast seen close to the seat of the state government, put the forest department in tizzy today.

However after the search it turned out to be seemingly a rumour.

The forest department had on November 5 after over 12 hours of high voltage operation caged the leopard that had sneaked in to the capital, also called green city due to large number of trees and forest patches in and around it, from forests situated at some distance.

DCF of Gandhinagar K C Trivedi said that the information about foot-mark of a leopard near Narmada ghat and Punit van area behind the secretariat, turned out to be false.

‘None of our guards or any local have any authentic info about it. They have not seen either the leopard or the foot marks as claimed. However as a precautionary measure we have intimated our personnel to aware the locals that they should not panic even if they see any such beast in the city and inform us immediately,’ he said.

Notably, on November 5, the leopard had entered the secretariat from beneath the entry gate in the wee hours and was captured on the CCTV footage. It was tranquilized and caged later from a close-by area outside. A massive search operation in the around 1 square km area of the secretariat was conducted involving around 300 to 350 forest and police personnel, Chetak Commandos were also deployed during the search of the beast in various areas adjoining secretariat as precautionary measures. Wildlife experts from Junagadh and Banaskantha and other places were also included in the search and rescue operation.

Leopards are found in abundance in many areas of Gujarat. Currently a man-eater leopard, which had killed 3 in last few days, had created terror in Dahod district of East central Gujarat.

DeshGujarat