A four-year-old boy was reported dead after a leopard attacked him in Pune’s Junnar taluka district on Monday afternoon. The incident occurred near the boy’s house when a leopard allegedly dragged him into a nearby sugarcane field while he was playing.
According to Pune rural police and forest department officials, the incident happened around 4 pm in the Aale village off the Pune-Nashik highway. The boy has been identified as Shivansh Bhujbal, the son of a local farmer named Amol Bhujpal Shivansh Bhujbal.
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This marks the third leopard attack this year in the Junnar forest division and the surrounding area. There has been a surge in instances of human-leopard conflict reported in the Pune district, with four such incidents occurring at different locations between January and April this year.
Village residents staged protests following the attacks and sought action from the forest department, demanding the installation of multiple trap cages in the area to capture the leopards. A forest officer stated that patrolling has been intensified in the area following the incident, and they are in the process of setting up trap cages.
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“Initial information suggests that when the boy was playing near his house, a leopard suddenly emerged from the sugarcane field and dragged the boy with him. His grandfather, who was working in the field nearby, raised an alarm. Some people in the neighborhood rushed into the field to rescue the boy. After dragging the boy for a distance, the leopard dropped him, leaving him with multiple serious injuries to his head, neck, and limbs. He was rushed to a hospital but was declared dead.” Inspector Yashwant Nalawade of the Alephata police station said.