BENGALURU: A killer leopard which was on the prowl, killing four people, in the villages of T. Narasipura taluk of Mysuru district has been trapped and the news of the leopard trapped in a cage was disclosed by Chief Minister Basavraj Bommai on his twitter account on Thursday. The Chief Minister also shared the pictures of a trapped big cat.
According to a forest official, a specially designed cage was place to capture the big cat, close to the spot where an 11-year-old boy Jayanath was mauled by the leopard a couple of days ago in Horalahallai of the taluk.
The leopard fell into the trap at around 2.30 am on Thursday and in the morning the forest officials darted the animal before shifting it to a cage. The trapped leopard has been shifted to Bannerghatta Zoo near Bengaluru.
To ascertain that the trapped leopard is the actual killer, forest officials have collected DNA samples of the leopard and also from the killing spots and the samples have been despatched to a lab in Hyderabad for confirmation.
The forest official said “From the patterns it looks that the same leopard that had killed people but lab tests will be confirmed in a couple of days before an official announcement is made on the killer leopard of T. Narsipur.”
To trap the leopard, forest officials designed a cage which they had tried on other leopard trappings in the region. A leopard on the prowl in the village of T. Narsipura taluk mauled Siddamma (60), Meghana (22) and Manjunath.
After the leopard trapping, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai asked forest officials to initiate steps from such incidents in future and stated to constitute a Task Force to deal with man-leopard conflict situations in the State.
