GHAZIABAD: A leopard strayed into the district court complex on Wednesday afternoon, injuring at least five people before a panic-stricken crowd managed to corner the animal and called in foresters to take over.The episode ended four hours later, with the forest department tranquilising the leopard and taking her away. A cobbler, two lawyers and a head constable posted at the court were among the injured. Hospitals TOI spoke with said two of them have serious injuries.Videos circulating on social media showed at least two people bleeding, and one of them being carried on another person’s back. Another clip showed the leopard confined behind a wall, agitatedly gnawing at metal rods. Bonfires, tranquiliser darts: How leopard was rescued from Ghaziabad court complexThe district court complex was teeming with lawyers, judges, litigants, undertrials and scores of staffers at 4pm on Wednesday when a leopard was spotted on the premises.Eyewitnesses said the cat, an adult female, pounced on some people near the court of the chief judicial magistrate. Alarmed, some of them attacked the animal with sticks and rods while others threw chairs. It took furniture, nets, and a collapsible gate to block and restrict the leopard to the first floor, officials said.Nitin Yadav, secretary of the Ghaziabad Bar association, said he was near a lift when the leopard lunged at some bystanders. “After attacking two lawyers on the third floor, the leopard jumped to the lower floors and attacked some more people.””The first thing we did was to shut the collapsible gate at the CJM’s court on the ground floor. Since the animal was terrified, people using another staircase blocked its escape route from the first floor by placing furniture and a net,” said lawyer Vikrant Sharma, who was at the complex that time.The Ghaziabad district and sessions court has 52 court rooms and an estimated 10,000 people visit the complex daily.Forest officials reached the court soon after, and were told that the leopard was hiding under the stairs in the building, where the entry and exit gates had been shut.”We couldn’t see the leopard as it was dark, so we contacted the Meerut divisional office, which dispatched a team equipped with a tranquiliser gun,” said AK Gupta, forest conservator.Chief conservator Ganga Prasad oversaw the operation to rescue the animal.”The challenge was to contain the animal within the temporary enclosure and since the exit routes from the first floor were barricaded with furniture and a plastic net, there were chances that the animal would escape,” Gupta said.Subsequently, the team lit a bonfire on the first floor to scare the animal away from the gates. With the darkness complicating the process, they had to ensure the tranquiliser darts don’t accidentally harm the animal.”When the leopard appeared to have exhausted itself, the team fired three tranquiliser darts that hit the animal. It took another 45 minutes for the cat to lose consciousness. After that, a sheet was wrapped around it and the leopard was taken to the DFO’s office in a cage,” Gupta said.The leopard appeared injured in photos and videos taken during the rescue operation. Asked about injuries seen around the leopard’s jaw, the forest conservator said it was “self-harm” when the animal kept biting the iron railing after being enclosed.”It does not seem like the leopard has suffered any major injuries, but a veterinarian will conduct a thorough examination at the DFO’s office,” said Gupta.Lawyer Vikrant Sharma, also an environmentalist who was at the court complex on Wednesday, said the big cat may have entered the premises the night before and hid on the terrace.”Around afternoon, the animal may have tried to get out and that’s when the incident happened. After all, leopards have been sighted in areas like Raj Nagar in the past and the court is hardly a kilometre away” he said.Gupta did not rule out the possibility of the animal having taken refuge earlier in the court. “But to ascertain that, we will have to look for pugmarks to find out how and when the leopard reached the court complex,” he said.Ghaziabad isn’t too far from the forest expanse near Saharanpur, where leopards are found. Last month, a male leopard died after being hit by a vehicle on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway. Just weeks before that, trap cages were set up and hydraulic cranes deployed after reports of a leopard sighting inside a society in neighbouring Greater Noida. The operation was called off a few days later.Two more sightings, both in Ghaziabad’s Raj Nagar area, were recorded in 2021. Two years before that, in 2019, a leopard was rescued from the Hindon air force base.Considered a ‘near-threatened’ species worldwide, leopards are listed under Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. According to a 2018 count, India has around 12,800 leopards.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ghaziabad/leopard-holds-court-in-ghaziabad-leaves-bloody-trail/articleshow/97750621.cms
![](https://www.digitaldelhi.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1675923100_photo.jpg)