Wild leopard chase on Delhi border: ADM, forester, cops, NGOs search in the dark

ADM Preeti Jaiswal announced on a loudspeaker at 12.30 am, “We have tried various means to ascertain movements of the animal. 90 per cent, there is no animal in the house. For the remaining 10 per cent, we will keep watch. All residents are requested to go back to their homes. Everyone is safe.”

Hundreds of residents had choked the Thursday Market road in the village in the evening, peering at the locked grilled gate of Dharampal Singh Prajapati’s two-storey house.

There was no sign of the animal till past midnight. (Source: Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)

Singh, who works as a tailor at an export house in east Delhi’s Gandhinagar, got a call at around 8.30 pm. His nephew, Ankit (22), told him that a leopard was locked inside a room inside a room on the ground floor of the house and that Singh’s daughter, Preeti (21), had locked herself upstairs.

Ankit told The Indian Express, “Preeti was sitting on the ground floor room when the leopard, after lunging out of Bharat Saraswat’s dairy, slipped into Singh’s house. The leopard jumped at Preeti, who ducked, ran outside and locked herself in a room upstairs.”

Locals said the “leopard” ran out, bit a man who was on a bike, knocking him off the vehicle. It then injured a 14-year-old boy.

Bitto Kumar, the 30-year-old biker who was attacked, showed what appeared to be bite marks on his arm and chest after he returned from a hospital. He said, “I was switching off the ignition when the leopard came out of nowhere and bit me on my arm. I fell down and the animal fled in the opposite direction.”

By then Preeti had raised an alarm, and Ankit, her cousin, who was nearby, hid behind a car outside Singh’s house, keeping a lookout for the animal.

“I saw the leopard rush back into our house. I ran up to the door and bolted it. Then we called police and Preeti’s father,” Ankit said.

Singh, who sped towards home after hearing the news, saw a large crowd outside his house. Together, Singh and Ankit got Preeti to climb down a ladder propped up from the balcony with the help of a ladder.

Personnel from Sahibabad police station, the district magistrate and other officials reached the spot with the village and had been planning camping out all night.

Forest Department officials from Meerut were on their way to the village. Two chickens were dropped into the house as bait for the “leopard” but there was no sign of it.

Earlier, ADM Preeti Jaiswal said, “We have no way of knowing what animal it is since we have not seen it. We are going by what locals are saying for now.”