Two separate leopard attacks were reported from Bandi village in Pavi Jetpur taluka of Chhota Udepur district on Sunday. In the first incident, a leopard attacked an eight-year-old girl. However, the villagers managed to rescue her and she was rushed to Bodeli for treatment of severe neck injuries. She was later referred to Vadodara SSG hospital. In the second incident, a two-year-old boy was killed by a leopard in the same village. According to officials, the boy, Chirag Rathwa, was sleeping a few metres away from his house when the leopard attacked him. The leopard allegedly held the child’s neck and tried to run towards the forest. However, the animal dropped the boy and fled when villagers tried to chase him. Chirag succumbed to his injuries before he could be taken to the hospital. These incidents have come two days after a leopard killed a 52-year-old man in his farm in Vavdi village in the same forest range of Pavi Jetpur taluka. “After the first attack was reported on Friday, we placed five cages with baits to capture the leopard. Now, we will place three more cages across the forest range. Though we can not confirm if the leopard in all these attacks is the same leopard but looking at the bite marks and the pattern of attacks we are suspecting that it could be the same leopard,” said Divisional Forest Officer of Chhota Udepur Range, Nilesh Pandya. “With such attacks increasing, we are also going to write to the government and our seniors in Gandhinagar for some stringent actions to reduce the number of these lethal attacks,” Pandya said.
