Nilgiris: A 3-year-old child was killed by a leopard at Thondiyalam near Menkorange in the Pandalur Taluk of Nilgiris district on Saturday evening. Nancy, the daughter of Jharkhand native Shivshanker, was attacked when she was returning from a nearby Anganwadi.
The child and her mother were walking back home through the tea plantation when the animal attacked them. Though the mother saved the daughter from the animal, the girl who suffered deep injuries on the neck, died on the way to the hospital.
Angered by the latest animal attack, villagers including plantation workers and farmers blockaded the road at all border towns of the Nilgiri district including Chermabady, Pandalur, Kolappally and Ayyankolly. The vehicular movement through the Ooty-Kozhikode route was disrupted due to the protest.
In protest against delay in capturing the leopard, a dawn-to-dusk hartal has been announced in Pandalur and Gudalur taluks of Nilgiri district on Sunday.
The latest was the third attack in the past two weeks, people said. A leopard attacked three women on December 21 at Elamanna near Kolappalli and one of them succumbed to the injuries later. On Thursday, an animal mauled Karthika, a four-year-old child playing in the front yard of her home. The child was admitted to the Taluk Hospital, Pandalur., with deep wounds. The animal left the child when people suddenly rushed to save the child.
On Friday the people of Kolappalli near Pandallur held a dawn-to-dusk hartal against the increasing leopard attacks in the region. Hundreds of villagers including traders and plantation workers staged a blockade in the Kolappalli town, demanding immediate capture of the leopard which has been spreading terror in the plantation region. Countless cases of cattle-lifting were also reported from the region in the recent past, people said.
Though the public has been demanding capturing the animal after tranquillizing it as the animal evaded the cage traps laid by the forest department personnel in the locality, the forest department had cold-shouldered it, alleges the villagers.
Expressing solidarity with the people, all traders of the Kolappalli town had observed a hartal on Friday. Later by evening, more than 1,000 shops of Pandallur taluk also downed shutters in support.
Aliyar Maliyekkal, the president of the Pandalur Taluk Merchants Association, said the forest department has to either capture the animal or kill it at the earliest. “Though cage traps were laid at various parts of the plantation, the animal is evading them,” he said. “It is high time the government ordered to shoot such animals," he added.
