Operation Leopard: Fourth big cat captured in Andhra's Tirumala

Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh) [India]: Forest officials have managed to trap and capture yet another leopard near the seventh mile of the Tirumala Ghat in Andhra Pradesh in the early hours of Monday.

This marks the fourth big cat that has been captured since the beginning of ‘Operation Leopard’, which began earlier this month and was initiated after several leopards were sighted on the walkway to the hilltop temple.

All the trapped leopards have been shifted to the Tirupathi Sri Venkateswara Zoological park.

Operation Leopard has been going on continuously since August 15 in the state.

Earlier this month, in two separate incidents while climbing the footway to Tirumala Temple were two children were attacked by leopards. While one child, a girl, was killed a five-year-old boy sustained injuries in the attack.

Amid the incidents, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) board and forest officials had set up CCTVs and cages to trap the leopards.

Nageswarao, Chief Conservator of Forest said “In the early hours of Monday we have caught a leopard in Tirumala Ghat near Seventh Mile of the Alipiri Footway.

Till today, we have caught three leopards and shifted them to SV zoo park and we had set up 300 CCTV cameras to monitor wildlife movement and we are going to arrange 500 more CCTVs in upcoming days to protect devotees.”

On August 17, a third leopard was caught on the Tirumala Footway.

Forest official Satish Reddy said, “We found two leopards wandering within five hundred metres of the radius near Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple.”

“On the 14th of this month, the trapped leopard was moved to SV Zoo Park. Trap cameras were set up for another leopard. At two o'clock in the morning, another leopard got trapped in the cage. We are moving it to the SV Zoo,” he added.