In Uttarakhand, the government has officially declared 166 leopards and 16 tigers as dreaded maneaters

The ill-fated and gruesome maneater (tiger and leopard) attacks and the subsequent killings have made the lives of the inhabitants in Uttarakhand a hell as they are constrained to live in an environment of terror, tyranny and constant fear.

The wildlife and the forest department, as well as the state government, are literally doing nothing right to improve the situation and save the children, women and senior citizens from the jaws of these cannibals. If we look at the statistics of the Uttarakhand government, (though all details not fully available,) till now, more than a thousand people have fallen prey to these carnivores in both Garhwal and the Kumaon divisions of Uttarakhand.

People especially the women, children and the senior citizens are afraid to come out in the open in the evenings and nights as these hungry predators are clandestinely on the regular prowl for human flesh. While there is a special impetus on the part of the state government to safeguard these tigers of Uttarakhand considered to be highly endangered species, extremely little or negligible is being done to safeguard the precious lives of villagers and those living in the towns of Uttarakhand – who are regularly falling prey to the jaws of these deadly maneaters. This has resulted in people leaving their villages and shifting to the nearby towns as living in a state of constant fear because maneater threat has made it nearly impossible for them to continue in these areas.

The residents living on the roadside houses or tenements near the jungles are the worst prey of these maneaters and predators. There have several incidents of these maneaters clandestinely attacking children by entering their houses and the cow shelters and forcibly grabbing the humans and carrying them to a safe place in the forest before making them their meal. As a sequel to these incessant killings by these maneaters a fifty-year-old ex-serviceman became an easy prey of a maneater in Bichla Badalpur area under the jurisdiction of Lansdown Tehsil under Pauri Garhwal district having been brutally killed after his badly mutilated body was found by the wildlife department. This tragic incident occurred on the evening of 25th January 2020 when the villagers saw a badly mutilated body of a farmer and ex-serviceman namely Praveen Singh Chauhan son of Gandhi Singh Chouhan near his village at Bichla Badalpur in Rikhnikhal development block.

The wildlife and the forest department was immediately informed who took the badly mutilated dead body under their control and registered the case. There is an environment of terror all around and the nearby village residents are keeping themselves indoors. The local public representatives and village heads have requested the government and the wildlife authorities to immediately catch the maneaters and if possible even kill them by hiring professional hunters. There are two to three dangerous maneaters in and around Lansdowne area who’d earlier also killed a few people, one being a wildlife department official.

In Uttarakhand, the government has officially declared 166 leopards and 16 tigers as dreaded maneaters.