What Lucknow has not witnessed in the past 40 years, it happened to see thrice in the past one month. It seems that city of Nawabs is becoming a favourite spot for leopards.
Stray leopards have been loitering in busy localities of Lucknow for the past one month. In the most recent incident, a stray leopard was found loitering in the Ashiana locality for the past four days, eluding forest department personnel, who failed to catch it.
Ultimately, in an encounter, the inspector of Ashiana police station, Triloki Singh, shot the animal dead on Saturday. Before this, the leopard had injured two local residents and a policeman.
The leopard had hidden in the house of one Shafeeq Khan in the busy Ashiana locality. When the police came to know about it, Singh reached the spot. The animal attempted to attack the inspector, who fired his service revolver, killing it.
Since the leopard is an endangered animal under provisions of the Wild Life Act, its killing has created a furore. The killing has resulted in a blame game between the forest and police departments. On the one hand, the forest department has lodged an FIR against unidentified persons for killing the leopard. On the other hand, the police department has recommended a magisterial probe into the incident by writing to the district magistrate, Lucknow.
SSP (Lucknow) Deepak Kumar said the inspector had to fire in self-defence and taking cognisance of the matter, the department has recommended a magisterial inquiry into the matter.
S.K Upadhyay, principal chief conservator of forest(wild life), said that the leopard could have been rescued instead of being killed.
Some forest officials maintain that the police did not give a chance to department personnel to tranquilise the leopard and before anything could be done, police fired at the animal.
Before this incident, the forest department had laid nets to trap the leopard, but around 5am on Saturday, the leopard tore the net and ran away. Subsequently, it entered the house of Khan, where the police spotted him.
This is the third incident of a leopard venturing into busy localities of Lucknow in the past one month. Earlier, a leopard was spotted in Thakurganj area and soon after, one more leopard was spotted in Chinhat area, but they have not been captured yet.