After a shocking video emerged on social media showing a group of people walking with a leopard, looking dazed, forest officials have jumped into action to rescue the big cat in Madhya Pradesh’s Iklera village.
In the video, the leopard is being seen surrounded by a mob of people, while one man can be seen pushing it away and also sitting on its back.
A forest guard official said that a team from Ujjain was sent to capture the leopard, reports PTI.
According to a report by NDTV, the leopard was spotted near Iklera in Dewas district. Initially, the villagers got scared, but when they saw that the big cat was not aggressive, they speculated that it was sick. Later, villagers surrounded it and started playing with it.
Forest officer Santosh Shukla told the channel that the two-year-old leopard was taken to Van Vihar in Bhopal for treatment. A medical examination of the animal was also conducted by a veterinary doctor from Mhow in Indore.
The senior official said that the condition of the leopard is critical, and despite this villagers troubled the animal.
As the video of the incident went viral on social media, users commented saying that it was “disgraceful”. A user posted the video on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption, “And we call them beast and man-eaters.”
Earlier in May, in Madhya Pradesh’s Hoshangabad district, a leopard mauled to death an employee of the forest department at the Satpura Tiger Reserve. The deceased was identified as Dhannalal Marskole, a daily-wage employee of the department.
