Rescued from Gurgaon, leopard released in forest

It was on Friday evening that the leopard was first spotted in the basement of a house, by some labourers who were carrying out construction there. Before it could be rescued, the animal jumped the boundary wall of the home and entered the verandah of a neighbouring house.

The owner of the house said it hid behind a bush, from where his wife, mistaking the leopard for a monkey, tried to chase it away. He, however, prevented any adverse incident by alerting her that it was a leopard before she got too close.

The two year old male leopard that was rescued from Gurgaon’s Badshahpur area yesterday evening was released back into the wild at midnight last night. @IndianExpress pic.twitter.com/L9KbsRR3xv

— Sakshi Dayal (@sakshi_dayal) August 10, 2019

“I asked everyone in my family to go into the house and lock the door. A lot of residents had gathered outside our gate and were trying to see the leopard, but I asked them to leave it alone, and called the police, who alerted the forest department,” said Rajendra Yadav, the owner of the establishment.

While attempts were being made to rescue the leopard, Yadav said it jumped onto his house’s boundary wall, and from there onto the terrace.

“My nephew was there at the time, and the animal attacked him. He has some scratches, but he managed to defend himself with a stick,” said Yadav.

Residents said the leopard then jumped back onto the road and ran into a salon. The owner of the business and two of his clients who were inside at the time fled upon seeing the animal, but closed the shutter. The leopard was finally rescued from here at around 5.30 pm, 2.5 hours after it was first spotted.