Amreli: The decomposed body of a young lioness has been found from a field with toor (a kind of pulses) crop in Talala area of Gir Somnath district, DCF Gir West Dhiraj Mittal today said.

Mittal told that the badly decomposed body of a 5 to 6 year old lioness was found from the field in Ambalsh village in revenue area close to Talala range in western parts of the Gir forests the sole abode of Asiatic lions.

‘I had visited the place to verify the claims that it had three cubs also and they had gone missing. It has not yet been verified,’ he said.

There were no injury marks on the body. We are awaiting the Post Mortem report to ascertain the exact reason of death, the DCF said.

Notably, altogether 6 lions including two female, one male and 3 cubs had died last month in Gir forests spread in more than 1800 sq km in three districts of of Junagadh, Amreli and Gir-Somnath in Saurashtra region of Gujarat.

Prior to that on October 13 also the body of a lion was found in Visavadar area of Junagadh district while on October 22 bodies of three lion cubs were found in Khadadara village in Amreli district. Before that the 23 lions of a single pride had earlier died between September 12 to October 2 in Sarasiya vidi area of Dalkhaniya range of the Gir forest in Amreli district due to deadly CD virus which had in 1991 wiped out 1000 or around 25% of the total population of African lions in an East African country.

DeshGujarat