Leopard found in school grounds in India

“The leopard entered the school on Sunday morning and was tranquilized and captured after a day-long effort by a team consisting of forest officials, NGOs and police officials”, local police chief NH Rajasekhar said.

A leopard attacks a man in a school premise in Bengaluru on Sunday.

Forest department officials suspect the leopard to have travelled at night as no one reported to have sighted it before the school. Leopards have become a growing threat to children after an environmental disaster began driving the big cats into cities to find easy food.

It was caught on school security cameras wandering around inside the building and along a swimming pool, where it attacked a man.

The leopard then ran into the school, where officials locked it inside a bathroom.

At one point Sanjay Gubbi, one of the six people who was attacked in the attempt to stop the animal, encountered the leopard with no means of defense aside from his binoculars.

Police and forest officials began an operation to capture the feline and according to local media reports, at least four people were injured. “We tried to lock it in an area, but the windows close to the roof were covered by a flimsy net. Even there, it pushed through the net and leapt out… those were nervous moments”, said Mr. Ralf.

It took an hour to confirm the cat was asleep.

India has some 12,000 to 14,000 leopards, according to a study the Wildlife Institute of India commissioned.

Wildlife expert say mass urbanization, denudation of forests, encroachment of forestland, vanishing of buffer zones in the forests and extraction of medicinal plants are some of the reasons responsible for increasing conflict between humans and animals.

A year ago a male leopard spent five hours trapped after its head became stuck in a metal pot in a village in Rajasthan, in northern India.