Hyderabad: Forest Department officials continued searching for a leopard sighted near the Miyapur Metro Rail station in Hyderabad.
Two teams of 10 forest officials, assisted by the police, were participating in the search operation behind the Metro Station in the Miyapur area of Kukatpally.
District Forest Officer (DFO) Laxman was supervising the operation. Authorities have alerted people living in the nearby areas to be cautious.
The leopard was briefly sighted on Friday. A short video clip of the animal walking on a pile of sand along a bushy patch was circulated on social media.
Initially, there were doubts about the location, but forest officials confirmed that the background in the video clip matched the area near the station.
The forest officials suspect the animal in the video clip is a leopard. However, they were inspecting the area to see pug marks and gather other details to confirm whether it was a leopard or a wild cat.
The forest teams were focussing their search operation around the Metro Rail depot, which is located next to the station and has some open scrub areas. The forest officials, with the help of police, installed camera traps to monitor the leopard’s movements.
The officials suspect that the leopard may have retreated into the depot after briefly emerging into the open.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests R. M. Dobriyal said immediately after receiving a complaint, they sent a team to capture the animal.
On Friday, Hyderabad Metro Rail officials learned about the animal’s presence in the area around 10 p.m. However, no alerts were issued to commuters or depot employees.
In May, a leopard was caught near Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Shamshabad on the city outskirts.
After a five-day operation, the forest officials trapped the big cat in a cage when it approached the live bait tied inside.
The three-year-old male leopard was shifted to Nehru Zoological Park and later released into forests.
Later, a leopard was also sighted near the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at Patancheru near Hyderabad.
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–IANS
