BENGALURU: In a replay of a viral WhatsApp video that showed a mobile game-playing child calmly locking up a leopard inside his home in Maharashtra last year, a courageous couple in Jigani, on the southern outskirts of Bengaluru, exhibited great presence of mind, successfully trapped a leopard that had walked into their house early Thursday and rushed out to seek help.
The incident in Kuntlu Reddy Layout turned out to be a challenging situation for forest department officials, as over 2,000 people climbed the rooftops of surrounding buildings to witness the spectacle.
After a 5-hour-long operation, forest officials safely rescued the leopard. According to officials, the incident occurred when Venkatesh, who was recovering from a leg injury, and wife Venkatalakshmi were watching TV and having coffee in the hall of their house at 7am.
Hiding leopard located through video call
The leopard walked into the house on the ground floor of the three-storey building. It walked behind the trio sipping coffee and entered a room.
Venkatesh and Venkatalakshmi noticed it in stunned silence. Overcoming their initial fear in less than a few minutes, the couple rushed out of the house and locked it from outside. When locals alerted us around 7.30am, we were shocked as the area does not have any green cover within a 2km radius,” explained V Ganesh, assistant conservator of forests, Bengaluru South subdivision.
Forest officials were at the scene in less than half an hour along with Leopard Task Force. “It was a tough task to locate the cat inside the 1 BHK house, surrounded by buildings all around. Rushing inside without knowing where the leopard was holed up was not an option,” he added. The officials made a sketch of the house and swung into action.
“With time running out and cloudy conditions making it worse with hardly any light, we strapped mobile phone to a stick and inserted it into the house through a ventilation window. We were constantly scouting for the cat via video call. After half an hour of search, we spotted its eyes underneath the cot in a corner of the room,” explained Ganesh.
Darting the cat was an even bigger challenge. “Any wrong move could have hurt the cat, which was frightened and under stress. We could not chase it out and rescue with nets as thousands of people had gathered outside, and the leopard could have jumped on anybody in panic,” Ganesh explained. The leopard was a six or seven years’ old female.
The officials slowly entered the house from the main door and secured the room’s door from outside. “We used reversible sedative Ketamine drug and took a shot at the leopard from a narrow opening. Luckily, it got stuck, and the leopard slept without any movements. After a few minutes, we entered the room and rescued the cat around 12.30pm,” yet another forester part of the operation explained.