Man eater leopard attacks going unabated in Uttarakhand

The dreaded leopard attacks taking lives the inhabitants in Uttarakhand has become an order of the day with terrifying incidents of tiger attacks increasing day by day with no hope of relief from the government’s side. Uttarakhand is primarily a hilly region with more than 70% part having covered with dense forests.

After the enhanced migration from the interior rural areas, the villages and increasing constructive activities, the wild animals, particularly the leopards, hordes of wild monkeys, beers and even wild pigs have created havoc in the villages destroying cultivated fields and even attacking the local inhabitants. Just yesterday in a horrifying incident of a leopard attack, a young boy was brutally killed with half of his body part eaten by the dreaded leopard in the Manila area of Kumaon, Uttarakhand.

The young boy, son of one Mr. Lal Singh hailing from the village Supi Kaafli Tok Laami Dhar in Uttarakhand who was studying in sixth standard was killed by the leopard yesterday night as per the facebook post of Narayan Singh Bisht, district media Incharge.

The information was immediately given to the forest division who later on retrieved the highly mutilated dead body of the deceased. This is not the single isolated incident of horrifying leopard attack but in Garhwal and Kumaon Uttarakhand, the leopard menace has till now taken hundreds of precious lives of people with no reprieve or relief from the forest department and the government of Uttarakhand. There is yet another news of a young boy of 25 year old having been brutally killed in yet another wild cat attack at Bhainciyakhana block’s Dungri Panchayat in Almora district namely Deepak Kumar.

The people of this himalayan state has become vulnerable prey to the wild cats’attacks and have been prohibited to come out of their houses after 7 PM as the man eater leopards are usually on the lookout for their human prey. It is usually said that after the increasing exodus of the village populatiin to cities and towns there is tremendous dearth of animal preys for these leopards and hence they enter houses in villages hungry and even in the locan towns in search of flesh and make humans their easy prey.

More over, the majority of the hill jungle areas having become barren due to the excessive pine trees has also resulted in shortage of green food animals inside the forests finally compelling the tigers, leopards and cheetas migrate to towns or villages in search of food thus making human beings their easy prey.

Hundreds of people have so far been succumbed to the leopard attacks in this Himalayan state of Uttarakhand but it seems that the government is more concerned to preserve the wild life than to safeguard the human beings. The forest department is literally sleeping and so are the other responsible agencies of the government.

It is high time that the forest department of Uttarakhand should devise concrete methedology or formula to get rid of these man eater leopards failing which the already vacant Uttarakhand villages will literally turn into ghost villages in the near future. The government will have to prioritise whether maneater leopards are important for them or the human beings.

In 2016 the government of Uttarakhand had declared 140 leopards as man eater who’d created havoc in the hill state with their killing spree. After two years their terror is still live with the human killings going unabated.