A labourer from Maharashtra was killed and his wife was seriously injured after they were attacked by a leopard in Gujarat’s Junagadh district early on Tuesday, forest officials said. Officers of the Gir (west) wildlife division set up trap cages to catch the wild cat in Visavadar taluka’s Jambuda village even as the woman was battling for life in a Junagadh hospital. “The man sustained injuries on his neck in the attack and that proved fatal,” Aradhna Sahu, chief conservator of forests (CCF), Junagadh wildlife circle, told The Indian Express. According to forest department officers, the incident took place in Kodhiya Kendra, an abandoned sanatorium, at around 3.30 am when agricultural labourer Raju Chogle, 50, and his wife Jasuben were asleep in the sanatorium. Two other labourers were also present in Kodhiya Kendra at the time of the incident. Soon after the leopard’s attack, someone dialled the 108 helpline and an emergency technician rushed to the spot with an ambulance, officers revealed. The injured couple were taken to a government hospital in Visavadar town and later to a government hospital in Junagadh city. Raju succumbed to his injuries soon after, while Jasuben is undergoing treatment in an ICU, forest officers said. “The woman is also critical so we have not been able to get a first-hand account of what happened. However, we observed pugmarks of a leopard in Kodhiya Kendra, suggesting it was a leopard which attacked the labourers,” a forest officer said. “Our staff has placed trap cages to rescue the leopard,” Sahu said. Kodhiya Kendra is located in a riverine patch, around 2 km from Satadhar, a religious site.
