PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/ Nainital
With the villagers seething with anguish and anger over the latest death from leopard attack in Dhari block of Nainital district, the Bhimtal MLA Ram Singh Kaira while expressing deep grief over the tragic death said that the Forest department had remained inactive despite the leopard activity being observed in the area for some time. “Such deaths of villagers keep happening at regular intervals, but the Forest department is yet to wake up,” he said.
Notably, a leopard, lying in wait in the Kulori Khutiyakhal area of Dhari block, had mauled to death a woman called Ganga Devi (35) while she was working in the fields on Sunday. Later, her mutilated body had been found 2 km away by the villagers who had launched a search on hearing the woman’s screams. The villagers said that the deceased has three children (two girls and a boy), while her husband is a farmer. After the Forest department officials had arrived at the scene upon receiving information about the death, the villagers had vented out their anger, saying that despite increased leopard activity in the past one month, the Foresters were unable to catch the man-eating leopard which had killed a woman 17 days earlier.
Importantly, this is the third incident of leopard attack in the district over the last fortnight and the second one in Dhari block. A leopard had killed a woman on the morning of December 26 in Talli Dini. Similarly, a few days earlier, a woman who had gone to collect fodder for her livestock in the forest in Chamoli village of Khansyun tehsil under Okhalkanda block had been mauled to death by a leopard in broad daylight. Significantly, all the recent leopard attack fatalities involved the village women and the man-eater remains on the loose till date.
The Forest department officials said that despite their strict and repeated instructions to the villagers against venturing into the dense forest areas, they kept on doing the same to collect fodder and firewood.
However, upping the ante against the Forest department for its alleged inaction,
the Dhari block chief, Bhavana
Arya warned that the villagers would be forced to protest at the tehsil if the Forest department failed to capture the man-eater immediately.Meanwhile, the Forest department announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the victim’s family. The Forest Range officer, North Gaula, Vijay Bhatt informed this and added that three more cameras have been installed in Khutiakhal forest in Dhari. “To date, 68 cameras have been installed in Dhari to capture the man-eating leopards,” he said and appealed to the people not to venture into the forests alone for their own safety.
