The town that cried leopard

At 10am on February 28, Sushant Sharma, divisional forest officer, Meerut district, received a call. Since the incident of February 24, he had attended hundreds of calls and this one was no less important. It was Neeta Khurana, principal of a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Meerut city. Panic-stricken, she had called the forest department because her staff had found ‘pugmarks’. Later that day, at 2pm, she called again to inform the department of some disturbing CCTV footage, which captured the movement of what looked like the leopard within the school premises. With the board exams starting the next day, Khurana wasn’t taking any chances. The students were packed off and the army was called in. The search for the leopard that had brought Meerut to a halt a week ago, began afresh.

On February 24, residents of Meerut awoke to a situation they were completely unprepared for. A leopard had strayed from beyond the army cantonment area and sought refuge at a timber merchant’s godown in Sadar Bazaar, before heading to the cantonment hospital, where he was locked inside a ward for nearly 10 hours. Hundreds gathered outside the hospital. Cameras flashed relentlessly. The army, the police and the forest department swung into action. A team of doctors from the Noida-based Wildlife Trust of India (WII), armed with tranquiliser guns, took their positions. Inside the ward, the leopard grew more and more distressed. It dug its claws, almost one centimetre deep, into the walls, and took a 12-feet leap towards the ceiling, clawing its way through the fan and twisting it out of shape. Later, it tore through the concrete wall, injuring seven people on its way out, bounding over a 10-foot high wall. Three darts were fired at it; only one struck. No one has sighted it since.

A two-day curfew shut the city down after the mysterious appearance and disappearance of the leopard. Meerut has limped back to life in the days that followed, but the fear of the leopard continues to stalk its townsfolk. In scores of calls, residents have called in to report suspicious ‘pugmarks’, shadowy movements, dogs barking and peacocks calling. “For two days after it was first sighted, I got at least 100 calls every day. Now, I get 15,” says DFO Sharma. “Initially, they were to report sightings, but now people mostly call to enquire.” Since February 24, 10 places in the city have reported suspicious activity and all of them have turned out to be dead ends. “They were paw prints of dogs. All week. No big cat,” he says, and proceeds to take out a notepad and scale, sketching out the measurements of a leopard paw — roughly 10x9cm — for SDO Sanjiv Kumar, who has come in with the latest report of a rumoured appearance. The ‘pugmarks’ they’ve seen, including the one at Kendriya Vidyalaya, are half that size.

For a week now, eight teams with five members each, have fanned out across the city on a 24-hour vigil. Each time a sighting is reported, crowds gather at the site. “I’ve noticed a band of youth that assembles at these places, shouting ‘tendua aa gaya, tendua dikh gaya’. They scare the residents, get their pictures clicked for the papers and run away, laughing,” says Sharma. Despite the-boy-who-cried-wolf ring to these rumours, the forest and police departments can’t afford to let their guard down, even for a day.

Stories in local newspapers have only added to the panic... tales of a “leopard horror show in Ghaziabad”, a leopard spotted in Hastinapur and another one found in Muzaffarnagar, even as the Meerut leopard resurfaces with great regularity on paper. It would seem that towns and villages in western Uttar Pradesh are playing reluctant hosts to a sudden congregation of leopards from all over the region. Last week, local newspapers reported a leopard on the prowl at villages on the Ghaziabad-Meerut border. A helpline number was also circulated; a wrong number that was “temporarily not in service” since its debut in the papers.

On Saturday, March 1, a local reporter thrusts his mike and flashes the camera at a drowsy DFO. “I’ve not slept properly in the last week,” says Sharma. His cheeks are puffy, eyes red with exhaustion, and his waistline has shrunk to the third hole of his belt, he complains. Theories on the whereabouts of the leopard are exchanged — some within reason, many incredible. One of the incredible-variety is that the leopard, love-struck, has strayed into the city to locate its premika or the she-leopard from Jarauda recently rescued by the department. If such rumours aren’t doing enough damage already, there is another one rapidly gaining ground — it’s about time the leopard hunted. So look for a kill; missing poultry, dogs, cattle or even humans.

At around 1pm on Saturday, the DFO’s phone buzzes again. This time it looks like a credible report. Colonel RK Sharma summons the DFO and the WTI team to Lal Kurti police station, which is close to the cantonment area. Loading his rifle into the jeep, he hurries on. Meanwhile, information has leaked to the media and two members of the local press also make an appearance at the station, inviting the colonel’s wrath. After a few sharp remarks, the colonel hops into his jeep and drives at breakneck speed, heading to the cross-country area — grounds abutted by forested land — within the cantonment.

Colonel Deep Ahlawat joins the group. The area, he tells us, is preparing for a horse show scheduled shortly. That morning, Dafedar Ankush, had heard the leopard roaring. All the dogs in the area had suddenly disappeared and the nilgai herd had moved too. “I have lived close to Corbett National Park,” says Ankush, “I can tell when it’s a big cat.”

The weather in these parts has been capricious the last week. In between bursts of heavy rain, even hailstorms, the skies have snuck in some much-needed sunshine. The horses practising for the show have left a marked trail on the soft soil. Amid those trails, the pugmarks of a big cat are unmistakable. The leopard has been here, as early as that morning. “Some of the pugmarks are seven hours old,” says Dr Saurabh Singhai from WTI. “They’re certainly a leopard’s. There is no doubt about it,” he says. Soon a packet of plaster of paris arrives and casts are made for the pugmarks. They will be checked against the pugmarks from the hospital. Some of them are more than a day old. In the cantonment’s forested land, spread over 160 acres and rich in prey base, the leopard seems to have found its natural home. “It may have lived here for years and we may not have known,” says the colonel. There has been no census for the prey base here. But Col Ahlawat informs us that all dogs, barring one, have returned. The leopard has hunted, we hope.

As the light rain turns into a hailstorm, the DFO and the WTI team head back to the forest department office. On the way, the DFO inspects the traps, which will be laid for the leopard later that night along with cameras to track it. “There’s a 50-50 chance of success,” says Dr Singhai. Talk veers to choosing an appropriate bait. Dogs are vetoed — “bahut halla machate hain (they make a lot of noise)”. Goats get a go-ahead — “bakri nahin, inhumane ho jayega. Bakra le leten hain (not a nanny goat, it’s too inhumane, a billy goat is okay)”.

Back in office, they start work on a new strategy. “Personally, I think it can be left alone, now that it’s in its habitat” says Sharma, poring over maps. The nearest settlement is Mamepur village, about 500m away. Beyond that lie vast swathes of forests. “But the army wants us to clear the area,” he says. Besides, without proof, the spectre of fear will continue to haunt the city.

According to data collected by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in 2013, 653 persons were killed and more than 17,000 injured by leopards in the last decade in 12 states, including UP. While the suburbs of Mumbai have seen leopards routinely stray into urban areas, UP has seen an alarming increase in man-animal conflicts in the last two months. The notorious maneater of UP, which has killed seven people, is still on the loose. “It depends on how you look at man-animal conflict. I’d call this straying,” says Dr Abhijeet Bhawal of WTI, who has come from Kaziranga Wildlife Sanctuary to help out. “The forests of UP are not protected by buffer zones.” In western UP, sugarcane fields and settlements sit cheek-by-jowl with the forests. In the season for cutting (November to March), such conflicts increase, says Dr Dhawal. The DFO looks on wearily. “But the leopard is over 5km away from the city. Meerut is safe now,” he declares, before walking out to relay the same message to the press.

The sighting of the pugmarks is the single-most credible evidence found by the forest department since its first encounter with the Meerut leopard on February 24 (the rest of India could briefly track him on twitter at >@MeerutLeopard ). After placing the traps last week, the leopard has not made an appearance in the city. The DFO is relieved. “Maybe, I can get a good night’s sleep now,” he says.

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