A two-year-old female leopard trapped inside a house in Jalamangala village, Ramanagar district, has been successfully rescued and released into the wild.
The leopard, which preyed on sheep and dogs, had panicked the villagers. When it entered the village around Saturday midnight looking for food, the wild cat got trapped in the house of one Shivanna, a doctor by profession.
As residents ran out and shut the main door, villagers gathered around the residence and alerted forest officials.
Officials assessed the situation and assembled a team of vets and tranquiliser experts led by Dr Umashankar from Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP) for the rescue effort.
After a five-hour struggle, experts who aimed at the animal from windows successfully fired the tranquillizer dart.
The leopard tried to attack them. It was eventually shifted to a cage and taken for release in the wild.
Ramanagar range forest officer Kiran said the animal was healthy and appeared to be two years old. “After checking the animal’s vital parameters, we released it into the wild,” Kiran said.
Among the officials involved in the rescue effort were Ramanagar DFO Devaraju, ACF Surendra, RFO Kiran and DyRFO Raju.
Residents urged forest officials to place cages around the villages to capture and relocate leopards as several of the wild cats have recently been straying into the village.