- A leopard killed a four-year-old girl in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu
- The girl's mutilated body was found in a forest five kilometres from home
- The incident occurred while the child was playing outside her house in Valparai
A leopard killed a four-year-old girl from her house in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore district on Wednesday evening. Her body was found in a mutilated condition inside a forest on Saturday.
Forest officials and the police recovered the child's body nearly five kilometres from the Pachhamalai estate. Roshni, daughter of migrant workers from Jharkhand, was playing near her home at the estate when the leopard attacked her in front of her mother.
After nearly 18 hours of continuous search efforts involving her mutilated body was discovered in a remote patch of the forest.
"Her body was found inside the forest. We had deployed forest and police personnel besides sniffer dogs and drones," a senior police officer told NDTV.
The attack has sparked panic and grief among estate workers and residents. Authorities are likely to focus on tracking and tranquilising the leopard, possibly to send the man-eater to a zoo.
Forest areas in the plains and hills often witness instances of human-wildlife conflict. While Tamil Nadu has begun installing AI-powered wildlife alert systems in some areas, experts say more coverage is urgently needed, especially in vulnerable estate regions.
Others point out that such incidents should be a wake-up call to focus on clearing human inhabitations in such areas, and an effective system must be put in place, ensuring the livelihood of communities who would be affected.
