Mysuru: In a ghastly incident, a mother leopard (4) and her two cubs were allegedly poisoned to death at Hallare village of Nanjangud taluk a couple of kilometres away from Omkar range of Bandipur National Park on Monday.
However, veterinarian who conducted the necropsy on the carcasses said that the exact cause will be known after a report from the Forensic Science Laboratory in Mysuru.
The carcasses were found behind the Government Hospital at the village and the carcasses were in the fields belonging to Mohammed Pasha and Chennabasappa. It is suspected that some villagers unable to tolerate leopardess and its cubs roaming in the vicinity might have poisoned a dog carcass, which was fed on by the big cats.
Locals suspect that someone aware of the leopards’ movements might have kept the dog carcass mixed with poison and placed at the precise location to kill leopards. But a search in the vicinity by forest officials to locate the dog carcass or other suspicious materials did not yield any result. Landlord Chennabasappa is said to be absconding after carcasses were found in his field.
Veterinarian Nagaraj told Deccan Chronicle that samples of carcasses have been collected and will be dispatched for forensic tests in Mysuru on Wednesday. The carcasses were said to be 38 hours old when traced by forest officials.
DCF Alexander, RFO Lokesh Murthy and others inspected the spot to gather details on the cause of the leopard deaths. However, killing big cats on the periphery of Bandipur National Park is not new. A couple of years ago, two leopards – one of them a black leopard were poisoned to death on the borders of Omkar range while tigers were also victims of poisoning by villagers in Gopalaswamy Betta range of Bandipur in the past.
