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A leopard that wandered into a school from a forest injured six people in the Indian city of Bangalore.
The male cat became frightened and aggressive when wildlife rangers and staff tried to corner it at Vibgyor International School. It pulled one man off a fence over which he was trying to escape, then dragged him to the edge of the swimming pool and bit his arm. The man forced it off by swinging a pair of binoculars.
The alarm was raised about the beast when surveillance footage showed it entering the Vibgyor International School’s premises. Video also shows the animal running around the swimming pool before attacking a man who had tried to climb up a wire fence to safety.
“It was a long struggle to capture the leopard” senior police official S. Boralingaiah told reporters. “Although it was injected with tranquilisers it could be captured only around 20.15 local time when the medication took full effect.”
Wildlife official Ravi Ralph told the BBC that he believes the leopard came from a patch of forest not far from the school.
Bangalore is often referred to as India’s Silicon Valley, known for its modern metropolis and thriving information technology community. The population of Bangalore grew by 47 percent in the decade between 2001 and 2011, and the size of the city swelled over 300 percent in 20 years. The urban sprawl has eaten into rural areas and forests on the city’s outskirts, invading leopards’ natural habitats and forcing them to become accidental or unwanted intruders.
Last September, the first official survey of leopards in India revealed that the total population of spotted felines to be somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000. Previous estimations put the figure anywhere between 10,000 and 45,000 nationwide.
Agencies/Canadajournal
