A leopard described by officials as a “man eater” was killed early on Saturday in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district after a hunter tracked its movements for nearly 10 days.
The leopard had allegedly killed a woman in Pithoragarh’s Papdeo village on September 3, said forest officials.
“The leopard that had killed a woman in Papdeo village in the district on September 3 and injured several others over the past few weeks was killed by hunter Joy Hukil at Chandak village when it appeared near a raised platform at 3 am,” Vinay Bhargav, Pithoragarh divisional forest officer, said.
Bhargav said the forest department had engaged Hukil for killing the leopard. He said Hukil succeeded in killing the leopard around 3 am on Saturday.
Bhargav said following demands from locals that the leopard be eliminated from the area, permission for the same was granted on September 25 and Hukil was brought in.
In a similar incident September last, another so-called ‘man-eater’ leopard, that allegedly killed a four-year-old girl in Bageshwar district’s Nadi Gaon area, was shot dead a month later by hunter Lakhpat Singh.
Singh had killed another leopard that had allegedly attacked nine people in Almora district.
