Six-year-old studying outside his house in Pune’s Junnar killed in leopard attack

Range Forest Officer for Junnar Forest Division, Praveen Chavan said, “Around 7.30 am on Wednesday, the boy was studying in the open space outside his house. Initial observation suggests that the leopard attacked him and dragged him away. A while later, as the boy was nowhere to be seen, his family started searching for him. His body was found some distance from the house. The post mortem revealed that the injuries were consistent with a leopard attack. The procedure to provide the family a compensation has been initiated. 10 trap cages have been installed in the area and surveillance has been stepped up to capture the leopard.”

Earlier this year in April, an 85-year-old woman was killed in an incident of leopard attack in a village in Shirur taluka.

The year 2024 witnessed eight deaths in incidents of human-leopard conflict in Pune district with five of those deaths being that of children. These were the second highest toll reported in a year in the last 20 years. After the back to back incidents last year, the forest department had issued a Red Alert for 13 villages in a five square kilometer area in Junnar taluka. People in these villages were asked not to step out before 9 am and after 5 pm. Subsequently Pune District Collector had notified over 230 villages from four talukas of Pune district — Junnar, Ambegaon, Shirur and Khed — as prone to disaster due to repeated incidents of human leopard conflicts.

Considering various driving factors of human leopard conflict in the region, the forest department has focussed on creating awareness and sensitising villagers. With a growing leopard population in the Junnar forest area in Pune leading to increased incidents of human leopard conflict in the region, the State Forest Department has sent a proposal to the union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to sterilise 36 female and 11 male leopard as a targeted birth control method to bring down the rate of increase of leopard population.