Bhopal: A sick leopard on Wednesday strayed into a Madhya Pradesh village and became a source of entertainment for the locals who took selfies with the wild animal, besides enjoying a piggyback ride on it.
A farmer in the village of Ilkera under Tonkhurd tehsil in Dewas district spotted the two-year-old leopard roaming in the cattle grazing field and raised alarms leading other villagers to rush to the spot, Rajesh Pattidar, a local said.
The villagers then surrounded the leopard and some of them gathered courage to go near the wild animal when they found it unwell.
Some youths took video of the incident and made it viral on social media.
A video, going viral on social media, showed the villagers caressing the leopard when it was struggling to walk.
Some of them were seen in the video taking selfies, while a few others even tried to climb over the big cat to ride it.
The leopard was later seen in the video lying on the ground with the villagers surrounding it and taking pictures with it.
“The leopard was found wandering in a dizzy condition by some villagers. A rescue team of the forest department rushed to the spot from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh after being informed of the incident. The people were dispersed and the leopard was rescued by the forest team”, forest guard of Dewas range Jitendra Singh Chouhan told this newspaper.
Local forest officer Santosh Shukla said that a veterinary doctor from Indore, nearly 50 km away, was called to examine the leopard.
The big cat was sent to Van Vihar in Bhopal for medical treatment after it was found to be in a critical condition, Mr Shukla said.
