Tourist killed in Uttarakhand after leopard attack

The partially eaten body of a tourist, who had gone missing and was apparently attacked by a leopard, was found today from near a temple in the Motichur range of Uttarakhand's Rajaji Tiger Reserve, police said.

The deceased was identified as 56-year-old Tek Chand from Haryana's Palwal district, they said.

The body is kept in a mortuary and the post-mortem is yet to be conducted, police said. The injuries suggest Chand was killed by a leopard, an official at the Raiwala police station said. Chand along with his elder brother and other family members had gone to Neelkanth yesterday, police said.

On their way back, Chand went into the forests behind the Satyanrayan temple in Raiwala around 4 pm yesterday, they said. The official said after he did not return, his relatives informed the police and a search was launched. His partially eaten body was found from the forest behind the temple around 10.30 am today. This is the seventeenth such incident in the area in three years, he said. Signages were put up in the Motichur area warning people of threat from wild animals, but they continue to go into the forests, the official said.

Recently, Wildlife Trust of India’s (WTI) Rapid Response Team (RRT) and Uttar Pradesh’s Forest Department rescued a tigress from getting lynched by angry villagers after the big cat killed a local.

According to locals, the remains Kamta Prasad, a 50-year-old resident of Sahatepurva village located near North Kheri Forest Division of Dudhwa tiger reserve in Uttar Pradesh, were found early Friday hours after he went missing. On conducting a search, the villagers found a tigress sitting near the farms located a few metres away from Prasad’s corpse.