Seven people have been injured during the past 24 hours in attacks by a leopard that has been roaming in different localities under the Gudamba police circle in Lucknow.
The leopard has been sighted in Kalyanpur, Adilnagar, Paharpur, Phoolbagh, and Jankipuram (Sector-H) areas of the city and its movement has been caught on CCTV cameras.
A team of forest department officials has been making futile efforts to trap the big cat or even tranquilize it.
The movement of the leopard was caught in the CCTV cameras installed in the residential areas of Gudamba.
People living in these areas have stopped moving out of their houses and are playing loud music to scare away the big cat.
A woman, Dharmdai Rawat, who stays on a school campus in Kalyanpur, was the first to be attacked by the feline. The injured woman was given 32 stitches on Sunday.
"I was working in the fields on Sunday afternoon when all of a sudden the leopard hit on my back," she said. Her son Veeru who tried to save her was also attacked and injured.
Another man, Yusuf, was also attacked in the same locality.
At least, five forest department teams comprising 25 members have been stationed in Adilnagar, Kalyanpur and Paharpur areas of Gudumba.
Though the forest officials conducted an extensive combing operation, they failed to trap the wildcat.
Later, on Sunday evening, R.S. Massih, 76, was attacked by the leopard. The leopard fled after hearing commotion.
Around midnight, the leopard got trapped in a net laid in a pit but it managed to escape and attacked some persons who had reached there to get a view of the animal.
In one CCTV footage, the leopard can be seen jumping over a boundary wall of a house and running away with a pet dog of the owners.
Additional deputy commissioner of police, north zone, Prachi Singh said police and forest officials were on the lookout for the leopard. "Officials have been asked to cordon off the area in case they spot the leopard," she added.
District forest officer (DFO), Lucknow, Ravi Kumar, who is supervising the operations, said, "It appears that the three-year-old leopard has strayed from Barabanki. We are trying to trap it so that it can be released in the wild," he said.
