Hyderabad: Telangana forest department officials, who discovered carcasses of a leopard and her cub on Sunday at the Tenagadapa reserve forest near Abbugudem village in Khammam district, suspect that the leopards might have been poisoned.
Body parts of the animals have been sent to the Laboratory for Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) and Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, for forensic testing to ascertain the cause their deaths. The decomposed state of the carcasses suggest that the animals had died a while back. The paws of one of the leopards were chopped off.
Divisional forest officer, Kothagudem, Mr S. Shantaram said, “We came to know about a recent case of cattle killing in Abbugudem but the villagers did not inform us. They might have placed poisoned meat to kill the leopards. If we had been informed we would have taken measures to trap the animal.”
He added, “While no FIR has been booked yet, a complaint has been filed with the Forest department. We will conduct our investigation. Police case will be booked when required. Encroachers from forest lands will be removed."
Like in other forests of Khammam, at the Tenagadapa reserve forest too, people from nearby villages illegally cultivate podu and cattle are also grazed in the jungle.
Around six years ago another leopard was killed in this region.
The earlier death and the recent one indicate the problem of encro-achment of forests in Khammam.
Khammam has the largest forest cover in Telangana state and also the highest number of forest encroachment cases. In March this year a female leopard and cub were found dead in Anantapur, AP.
